Gaiscioch Magazine - Issue 10 by Gaiscioch Magazine

Gaiscioch Magazine Issue 10, 2016

e say farewell to the warm days of summer and look towards the fall with great anticipation. Both Edward “Screenager” Orr and I ventured to conferences for this issue and what we learned was that 2017 is going to be a very very big year for gaming.

Benjamin Foley

Founder & Managing Editor Gaiscioch Magazine foghladha@gaiscioch.com

Follow the Gaiscioch Magazine Online at: http://gsch.info/mag Learn more about the Gaiscioch Family at: http://gsch.info/ Discord: http://gsch.info/voice Facebook: http://gsch.info/facebook Twitter: http://gsch.info/twitter Google+: http://gsch.info/google YouTube: http://gsch.info/youtube Twitch.tv: http://gsch.info/twitch Beam.pro: http://gsch.info/beam

The past few years have been bleak with only a handful of exciting titles on their way to store shelves and digital distributors. In fact last year’s PAX Prime was one of the tamest conferences I had ever seen. This year however, they came back with a vengeance. So much so we decided to delay the issue a few weeks so we could bring you all of this exciting content. This issue we’ve named our Cons & Artists issue as we feature spreads from GamesCom and PAX West along with many talented cosplay artists and digital illustrators. This issue features interviews with Digital Arts Pioneer Cris Ortega, Christopher Junior & Simon Ffinch share information about the new RIFT expansion, cosplay artists Demorafairy and Kazy Cosplay, and Twitch streamer Pianoimproman. There are over 20 games featured in this issue ranging from blockbuster titles to indie games. We hope that you enjoy our magazine and welcome you to send us your feedback at: magazine@gaiscioch.com. Thanks again for supporting our publication!

Magazine Staff Gaiscioch Magazine is a quarterly, volunteer driven, no-profit, digital magazine for game developers and enthusiasts alike. Managing Editor & Layout Benjamin “Foghladha” Foley <foghladha@gaiscioch.com>

Senior Editors: Althea “Briseadh” Damgaard <briseadh@gaiscioch.com> Robert “Jairone” J. Mann <jairone@gaiscioch.com>

Editors / Columnists: Bill “SwordandKeyboard” Owens <swordandkeyboard@gaiscioch.com> Ed “Screenager” Orr <screenager@gaiscioch.com> Eiahn Matthews <eiahn@gaiscioch.com> Esther “GmaFog” Foley <humblemisty@gaiscioch.com> Kimberly “Izmina” Perdue <izmina@gaiscioch.com> Nichole “Twilah” Quillen <twilah@gaiscioch.com> Shea Fort <shae@gaiscioch.com> Simon “Myrzon“ Shupp <myrzon@gaiscioch.com> Yulan Cardoso <yulan@gaiscioch.com>

Livestream Team: Benjamin “Foghladha” Foley <foghladha@gaiscioch.com> Ed “Screenager” Orr <screenager@gaiscioch.com> Michael “Smitty” Smith <smitty@gaiscioch.com> Amanda “Soren” Carr <soren@gaiscioch.com> Nichole “Twilah” Quillen <twilah@gaiscioch.com>

Slán go fóill! Join the Gaiscioch Magazine volunteer team by visiting: http://gsch.info/mag Send guest articles, art, requests, comments and feedback to: magazine@gaiscioch.com Please Note: All correspondences from Gaiscioch will come from an email address on the “@gaiscioch.com” domain ONLY.

A Special Thank You to Our Supporters

e would like to take a moment to thank all of our readers for their continued support and encouragement. Without your support we would not be able to keep this magazine going. In addition we would like to thank the following companies who have our undying gratitude for their support of the Gaiscioch Magazine & Livestreams productions. These companies have shown their support by providing interview opportunities, special access to their games, and social media exposure for our publication.

Without the support of our readers and the contributions from gaming studios we could not make this magazine so successful. We are happy to report that Gaiscioch Magazine has been read more than 150,000 times by over 20,000 unique readers to date. This is a huge accomplishment for a team that is staffed entirely by volunteers and we thank all of you for your continued support. Thank You!

Issue 10 Magazine Supporters

Supporters

Livestream Supporters

Please Note: Gaiscioch Magazine & Livestreams does not bias itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reviews, previews or livestream content. We do however only show games that we think you will enjoy. We do not believe in bashing game titles therefor we will only publish & stream games we think our audience will enjoy. If you would like us to review your title, and think our audience may enjoy it, please send an email to: magazine@gaiscioch.com for further review. If we think your game is right for our audience weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll stream it or publish it.

COVER STORY:

Cons & Artists 8

The Creative Mind of Digital Arts Pioneer Cris Ortega

Conventions

Contents

A Look inside Gamescom 2016

Hidden Gems of Gamescom

On The Floor of PAX West 2016

Cosplay & Art

Cosplay Behind The Mask

Inside Cosplay with Kazy Cosplay

84 Behind the Mask with Demorafairy Cosplay

PAX West Cosplay Gallery

The Best of Tom Mathews Photography

Artist Spotlight: Chamille “Rin” Mies

FEATURES

Scott Hartsman Talks Guilds, Games, Corgis and More

88 Game Development Spotlight: Czech Republic

Twitch Spotlight: 10 Questions with Pianoimproman

The Anti-Social MMO Epidemic

GUILD WARS 2

104 Living World Season 3

108 Handbook for Fractals of the Mists

116 When Mushrooms Go Bad

120 Cookie & Misty Get Cookin’: Siamoth Slaw

RIFT

128 A New Age For RIFT

134 Gaiscioch Talks to Christopher Junior About RIFT’s Rising Star 92 4

Guides

142

Previews

32 Dropzone

68 Foxhole

36 Gwent

22 Hob

Like a Boss

Master x Master

The Metronomicon

Of Kings And Men

64 Outward

Shadow Warrior 2

Sniper Ghost Warrior 3

State of Mind

Star Trek Online

REVIEWS

154 Kingdoms

158

Ghost of a Tale

162

Dragonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Dogma: Dark Arisen

168

Riders of Icarus

174 Warface

180

Crowdfunding

146

System Shock

148

Prey for the Gods

150 Diabotical

152

GAISCIOCH LIFE

Cooking in Black Desert

911 Operator Dual Universe Guns of Icarus Alliance

108

128

Mirrors Edge 2

Contents

104

146

FOX n FORESTS

184 Chicken Milano with Lemon Tarragon Mushroom Sauce

186

Worth Playing: Top 5

190

Gaiscioch Community Corner

77 5

About the Gaiscioch Family

he Gaiscíoch (pronounced Gosh-Kia) began on November 11th 2001 in the industry pioneering MMORPG “Dark Age of Camelot”. They began on the Nimue roleplaying server with a focus on creating a fun and enjoyable community for players of all ages and skill levels.

their members to play how they want, when they want, as long as they want and do not constrict them with quotas or requirements. The overall focus of the Gaiscioch is to support the server communities and real world communities they are part of. They accomplish this by hosting public community events, participating and hosting community forums, interacting with game developers, and providing new players information through our in-game advisers and out-of-game guides, maps, and videos.

The Gaiscíoch takes it’s name from an Irish legend found within the “Lebor Gabála Érenn” and “Cath Maige Tuired” which chronicle the first people of Ireland, the Tuatha de Danann. Specifically the First Battle of Moyturna where the Tuatha de Danann hand picked the most honorable and loyal warriors to fight alongside the Celtic Gods in With a strong focus on community our endgame a battle against the Fir Bolg. These warriors were goal is to create memories, friendships, and known as the Gaiscíoch. participate in the overall success of the community. It is through gaming, athletic competition, and The Gaiscioch are a social gaming community with social interaction that we forge new friendships a relaxed approach toward gaming. They allow and relationships.

Gaiscioch Spring 2016 Demographics

Cover Story

Cris Ortega

Cover Story

The Creative Mind of Digital Arts Pioneer

By: Benjamin “Foghladha” Foley

Thank you for taking the time to hen I was going through my first years of share a little about your passion. college, the idea of “Digital Art” was still To kick things off, can you tell us a foreign to many. Art circles didn’t accept little about yourself and your art it as art, people shunned you for it, and said it form? wasn’t really art. Even in my freshman year (2007) it was considered part if the computer science It’s my pleasure to talk with you. department and was not part of the art program. This was largely to the misconception that the I’m an artist and writer born in Spain. I have been computer did everything for you. working on this medium for more than fifteen years, focusing mostly on fantasy and gothic genre. As anyone who has worked with digital art can My principal medium is digital art, with fantastic tell you, that’s simply not the case. Digital art has realism as my preferred style. I have published come a long way since then and one of the people several artbooks with my images, along with who helped bring it into a more accepted art style posters and puzzles, and other merchandising is Cris Ortega. She has been at it since before the products. I also worked as cover artist for several time of Wacom tablets and is one of the most books, games and advertising. recognized digital artists today. I had a rare opportunity to cross paths with her, thanks to the world of Social Media, and I absolutely had to see if I could land an interview with her as I spent so much time of my collegiate life admiring her work. What do you know, here I sit today with the legendary Cris Ortega.

I’ve been following your work for a bit more than a decade now and have always found you as one of the leaders in the digital medium. Can you share with us a little about how you got started with digital illustration? 9

Cover Story I’m flattered that you’ve been following my work I said before, digital art was one of the things I had for so long, thanks!! to teach myself to do, since at that moment it was a very new technique. Anyway, I think every artist I started with digital art when it was a new and should keep studying and improving each day, it’s unknown medium. At that time there were not one of the best parts of this profession. tutorials, or tips or anything at all to help you learn You are one of the more versatile how to paint with a computer program, so it was artists being able to do Gothic, all trial and error. I can say that I’m self-taught on digital art because of that, but the knowledge Fantasy, and Sci-Fi art. You have had several books published featuring I gathered from my art studies in traditional your art. With so much variation mediums helped me to go through it. in art style which style is your Were you formally trained for art favorite? or did you teach yourself? It’s difficult to say because I like to change and I’m part self-taught and part trained. I began to try new things from time to time, and every style practice by myself when I was very young. Later, it’s interesting in one way or another. Indeed, I’m when I was sure I wanted to do art for a living, I planning to try new ones as soon as the chance went to the Art School, where I learned a lot about appears. But I think my preferred ones are fantasy illustration, design and photography. Once my and steampunk, I enjoy a lot working on them. studies were finished, I kept learning by myself. As 10

Thinking back to where it all began, what did you use to create your first digital works?

Believe it or not, my first digital works were made I work with a very potent computer that is not with a mouse. I highly advise anyone to never try connected to internet, since it’s the best way to it, it’s exhausting. I used Photoshop back then, work. It’s a lot quicker and rarely freezes. My just like now, but the program has changed a lot in tablet is a Wacom Intuos 3, I had been working all this years, for better. Then it was a photograph with it for about ten years and I’m not planning focusing program that had a very few options for to change until it breaks, I find it most useful than painting, but it was the one I could put my hands other models. on, and once you learn how to work with it, it becomes easier. About programs, I always work with Photoshop, mostly because of habit. I tried other softwares, What tools & technologies over the last decade have helped bring your but I was not convinced about the results. I have art to the next level? a large amount of brushes, some mine and some from others, but at the end I keep using the same The graphic tablet was one of the best things for few ones again and again. As you can see, old digital painting, it makes the medium very similar habits die hard. to traditional techniques. I find the 3D programs

Cover Story

Just as a painter has their favorite brush set, digital artists rely heavily on their computer and tools. Can you tell us about your setup?

Cover Story

one when the project involves several paintings or a big story behind. Most of the times I write down that idea when it’s born, and several months –or years- later, it comes to live. Once I choose an idea, I began the process of studying everything related to it, from the clothes the character is going to use to the positions and the background. I do several rough sketches until I find a scene I like, and then I began to paint. I usually fill the general shadows and lights in a monochromatic tone that will be used as a color basement, and once the basic tones are there I work on details. But the process is not always the same, sometimes I approach other steps first, it depends of my mood. I could spend hours just painting little details, so a full painting could take between two to three weeks to complete. And the final result is usually different from the original idea, I always let myself some freedom to change things here and there to make the painting better. When you’re not drawing, what hobbies do you enjoy? very useful for references and anatomy, and now I do have a lot of hobbies, but unfortunately I also there are so many tutorials, tips and manuals have few time to enjoy them. Traveling is one of my available that you can keep learning new things to great passions, I had very good experiences meeting other peoples and cultures. I love to read, going out improve your work. with my friends, and I go to the gym frequently. The creative process is different for But I also love to spend my time studying history, all of us. Can you walk us through archaeology and folklore, or taking photographs. a project in your creative process. I’m also an amateur astronomer. So, as you can How does it begin? What steps are see, I always have something to do, I’m not easily involved in creating these beautiful bored. works of art? The first step is always the idea. Could be a brief one of a scene I want to depict or a very complex

What accomplishment are you most proud of so far in your career?

I was a gamer, and it’s something I really miss. I had to stop because I didn’t have enough time anymore, but I really hope I can enjoy playing games again soon, when my current projects are over and I can have some more free time.

The project I’m working on at this moment… probably because I didn’t have the time to see every little mistake yet. If you ask me the same question a year from now, it’s very likely that I will change my answer to the most recent project at that moment.

I have been a gamer since I was ten years old, back then I even took part of some competitions (of Super Mario Bros and Street Fighter, since they were the cool ones at that moment). My favorite games were the Final Fantasy and Resident Evil series, and most RPG games that I could put my hands of. But I also enjoyed fighting and racing games. Right now, I’m dying to try the Assassin’s Creed and The Witcher series, but there are a lot of new games that I will surely enjoy a lot. Hopefully, I will be able to do so very soon.

Cover Story

Are you a gamer? If so what are your favorite games?

But I’m also proud because it is something I have been wanting to do for more than fifteen years, but I didn’t have the courage to go ahead until now. It’s a personal victory for me. What’s next for Cris Ortega? What’s your biggest dream you’d like to accomplish? I’m currently working on two projects, along with

Cover Story my usual amount of commission works. I have been working on both for five years. One of them is going to be finished in about two months, and the other one is going to take me several more months. To finish them is what I want to accomplish right now, both are projects I wanted to do for a very long time. About my biggest dream, I could say it’s to do an oil painting, big and complex, like the ones done by the old masters. It’s something I really want to do sometime.

Once you’re good enough, people will say and do anything to make you fail and quit. Prove them wrong.

Learn More About Cris Ortega Homepage: http://www.crisortega.com

Do you have any inspiring words for a young artist out there?

Facebook: http://gsch.info/q/crisortegafb

Well, apart from the usual “practice, study, and never give up”, there’s something I would like to add.

Twitter @crisortegaart

Cover Story

Feature

A Look Inside Gamescom 2016 By: Edward “Screenager” Orr 2016 marks my fourth trip to Cologne and the Gamescom exhibition. It crams in thousands of people, hundreds of exhibitors, and more games than I could even hope to play. Indies and AAA titles all sit under one enormous roof in Europe’s annual celebration of everything gaming. Gamescom has been around since 2009, when it played host to around 245,000 convention goers. It has now grown in size, covering 10 halls, around 345,000 members of the public, thousands of press, and hundreds of exhibitors. It is a melting pot of people, hardware, heat, and noise that you simply have to experience. 16

Gamescom is not just about the games. It is the very best opportunity that many European gamers have to get up close and personal with their contemporaries. Over the years, I’ve helped host inter guild parties, traveled with entire guilds, and watched some amazing community teams connect with their fans. This year was no different, starting on Wednesday I scoured the floor for the most interesting titles, saw some massive stages, and watched some intense competitive action. By the end of the week, I was back in the UK with another year laid to rest Photo’s Courtesy of: Koelnmesse

and some unexpected surprises for this issue, and later this year. The community team at Crowfall really impressed me; Perfect World surprised me; and Dropzone kept their sights set on the stars. Gamescom is an amazing experience and something every gamer should attend at least once. Be careful though, it is a behemoth. It will chew you up and spit you out. When you do decide to join me at Europe’s premier gaming event, bring water, eat well, and know your limits. This is Gamescom after all.

Hidden Gems of Gamescom By: Ed “Screenager” Orr

Four games you might have missed from this year’s Gamescom Slip off the beaten track at any Games convention and you will find some unusual sights. The restroom queues, coffee that fights back, more cosplay than you can shake a roll of worbla at, and some overlooked gems. Hidden away from the overpowering din of the main stages, we found some interesting titles that you might have missed during the con season.

Preview

Of Kings and Men A trip to see what Greenman Gaming has to offer is always rewarding. Greenman has a history of curating some interesting titles that might be just a little too risky for other publishers. With a pedigree that includes The Black Death and Lifeless, I am rarely disappointed by their arsenal.

distinguishes itself from the rabble on sheer scale alone. Masses of players fill a campaign map, skewering, hacking and gouging their way through opposing players. This might not seem unusual at first glance, but it is when players get together that the magic happens.

Of Kings and Men fits this bill. It is a labour of love for the same tiny team of indie developers responsible for the Mount&Blade: Warband cRPG mod. The last few years have seen them overcome distance, time zones and a failed Kickstarter, finally setting up shop in Belfast under the Greenman Gaming umbrella. Of Kings and Men is a third person multiplayer medieval war game that throws players into an absolutely massive campaign to take on hordes of other players. If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re thinking of trying this out with your guild, you might want to make sure you have a sizeable roster. This title

Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games regularly try to tame the siege, allowing huge numbers of adventurers to clash in battles of huge proportions. They rarely succeed. As players crash into each other, systems strain under the sheer volume of data, causing armies to descend into anarchy as players judder aimlessly across the screen. Kings and Men has seemingly conquered this problem. Alessio, technical lead on the project, explained in simple terms that by selectively rendering and tracking other players the game engine is able to simply ignore characters that are 19

Preview not relevant to you. Clashes filled with hundreds of players seem to simply flow by without incident. Archers, knights, spearmen, and grunts wielding a variety of weapons all spawn, die and, respawn without incident. Even more astounding, rather than create a fully sandbox state which will ensure player interactions are nicely spread across twenty-four hours, Of Kings and Men includes timed objectives. Players

are encouraged to log in over a concentrated period and cluster together to conquer objectives on the campaign map, ensuring that everyone that turns up gets a piece of the action. With the right incentive and supporting systems, this approach could create the sort of social dynamics that many games simply fail to engineer in the modern era. I got some hands on time and found getting into the fray is fairly easy for anybody that has experienced

I am not a medieval warfare fan but Kings and Men has intrigued me. The possibilities that emerge from castles, hundreds of players seamlessly interacting, and a chest of shiny loot are exciting. It might seem like a simple concept but getting siege warfare right is something that massive AAA studios struggle with all the time. It might be that a small team of indies has cracked it.

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stance based combat before. Movement is primarily WASD based, using the mouse to attack, defend and change stances. Each player can select a weapon most suited to them, making the experience different depending on the chosen weapon. With bows, crossbows, maces, spears, swords, axes, and polearms all included, accuracy of combat is hard to determine at this stage. The game is already in early access and I found ganging up on other players far more effective than trying to be skillful anyway. What I did notice is that combat is fluid and fast. The same systems that keep lag down also means combat is satisfyingly responsive.

You can keep an eye on of Kings and Men at: http://ofkingsandmen.net

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Inside Gamescom 2016

ob is a game that I found quite unexpectedly. Sitting in the back of the Perfect World stand, shoehorned in behind Giganticâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rows of computers, was an altogether calmer slice of Gamescom. After battling the Borg in Star Trek Online, and seeing some massive action in Gigantic, I squeezed around behind the throngs of Motigans to try out Hob, the latest title from Runic Games.

life. Aesthetically, Hob is just as beautiful as the Torchlight franchise. It is full of very bold lines and soft cell shading that gives it a slightly quirky edge. Runic mix two and three dimensional elements in the fore and background, all of which are reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

This comparison is equally valid when it comes to gameplay. Hob is an isometric action puzzle Hob is an action platformer, set in the ruins platformer with a good emphasis on the action of an ancient civilisation. Players traverse a portion of the game. Controls are uncomplicated variety of landscapes filled with ancient relics, with WASD movement keys and a useful set puzzles, monsters, and some spiky local plant of combat abilities. Players come equipped

Preview

with a traditional sword and a powerful arm augmentation, good for swatting problems as they arise. As players run, jump, and clamber over the map, new areas unfold by solving puzzles, making this more than an exercise in bashing critters and looting gems. Solving puzzles in Hob requires a little leg work. Stages are gated, quite literally, and are unlocked using the mysterious power that lurks in the players left arm. I found myself a little confounded by one stage and the ingenious placement of a vicious critter hive. Despite this, working through puzzles is satisfying without being infuriatingly long.

Hob is totally unlike anything Perfect World has published before and Runic showed only the briefest glimpse of some very basic gameplay, but I am already waiting to throw money at the screen. This is an utterly charming adventure that unashamedly appeals to everything I have ever loved about Hyrule. Keep an eye on Gaiscioch for more information on this when it arrives on PC and PS4. If Runicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s history is anything to go by, this could be a classic. Learn more at: http://runicgames.com/hob/

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The Metronomicon The Metronomicon is a game that has already been covered on the Gaiscioch website but it deserves another mention in this round up. The Metronomicon is a rhythm based RPG, produced by Puuba and published by Kasedo Games. It combines the soul of rhythm based gaming with the depth and lore of an RPG. For players like me that love both these genres, this is an instant lure and I was not disappointed by my Gamescom encounter. I had some hands on time with a party of musical heroes at Gamescom, throwing some epic fireballs and the odd legendary shape. 24

The Metronomicon takes place in a mystic land, protected by mages, wizards, and warriors of the great Metronomicon. These masters of the dancing arts must deal with a new and unusual electronic beat, as it begins to envelop the land. The soundtrack for The Metronomicon is a treat for a particular set of music lovers. If you love electronic sounds, synth beats, and the odd wub then you will appreciate the lit of high profile names that have contributed to the gameâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s music. Combat is centered around the rhythm of your party. The

game throws four character into battles against a variety of enemies. Each character has a rhythm track which players can easily switch between. Skills are used by successfully matching the rhythm of each track. Basic controls will make sense to anybody who has played almost any rhythm based game and ramp up in difficulty as the game progresses. The idea of a rhythm based RPG might sound like a novelty but the team at Puuba has put a huge amount of effort into this title. They have individually sequenced hundreds of track

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variations, created an entire single player campaign, designed eight characters with distinct abilities, tiers of gear, progression, xp systems, and even put together a voice acted story. The amount of depth in the RPG elements alone is impressive. Aesthetically, The Metronomicon is loud and kooky. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s full of bright colour, disco lights, lasers, nefarious dancing bears, and a

personality that seems to burst out of the screen. While games like Crypt of the Necrodancer flirt with rhythm, The Metronomicon can only be explained as a result of radioactive gene splicing between Dance Dance Revolution and Shovel Knight. It is quirky, cool, and unashamedly neon. The Metronomicon is due out on PC and Mac soon.

Watch our Developer Interview and Discuss at: http://gsch.info/a/167337

Learn More At: http://gsch.info/q/metro

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ike a Boss is a title I first came across by accident at EGX Rezzed. While Versus Evil were busy wowing the crowds with the Banner Saga 2, I was ushered towards a mobile game in the back of the booth. Like a Boss, developed by Firehorse Games, is a mobile game that slays the traditional hero quest tropes. Eager at the opportunity to enrage early and kick some adventurers into the fire, I got hands on with this title at Gamescom.

Like a Boss invokes memories of the classic, Dungeon Keeper franchise. These broke the mold for the classic Role Playing Game genre and put players in the skin of the wickedest dungeon keeper of the land. Like a Boss takes this twist and runs with it, riffing all over MMORPGs. As a mobile game, Like A Boss does not have any pretence to be unreasonably complex. Players take control of a raid boss and defend their homestead

Being a boss doesn’t dampen the game’s style. It is a bright, energetic experience that carries itself with a definite flair, paying homage to the traditional MMORPG. Heroes that pour into the dungeon displaying the same personality quirks that we’ve all seen online. In fighting, backbiting, misbehaving, aggro magnets, and Leeroys are all present. The same tactics are also used and taking out the healers are an optimal approach. As with the controls, the premise of Like a Boss Overall Like a Boss has a fantastic personality is uncomplicated. Defeating a raid party takes and instantly had me hooked. Like A Boss is not just a few minutes and rewards players, allowing your next life changing MMORPG, it is a great ode them to progress and upgrade their abilities. The to the MMORPG, its culture, and a thoroughly game includes progression, including skill trees, entertaining distraction. crafting, gear upgrades, and a campaign. After growing a boss, opportunities arise to expand your sphere of influence, burning villages, hunting down NPC’s, and, still, defending your dungeon from more virulent attack.

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from the raid parties after some sweet loot. Controls are robust but simple. A small action set sits at the bottom of the screen, allowing bosses to stomp and smash their way through trespassers. Targeting is as simple as tapping an unfortunate hero. While I found selecting a target was a little hit or miss at times, it was functional and did nothing to avert the raid party’s demise.

Find out more information on Like A Boss at http://firehorse.com.br or find it on iTunes now.

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New Frontiers Ahead for Star Trek Online New frontiers ahead for this MMORPG By: Ed â&#x20AC;&#x153;Screenagerâ&#x20AC;? Orr Gamescom is a show filled with new frontiers. Rows of screens open up portals to unexplored worlds as players step into futuristic cities, frozen wastelands, and historic warfare. Star Trek Online launched back in 2010 when it brought the final frontier to PC. Since then, it has spawned three major expansions and in 2016 comes to console.

Graphically, Star Trek Online has aged. It is inevitable that any game will succumb to the gradual march of technology, and even the Borg are unable to adapt fast enough to prevent STO from showing it. With the jump to console, STO takes a massive graphical leap forward. Cryptic has introduced HDR lighting, clustered forward rendering and a whole heap of light probes across At Gamescom 2016, I got familiar with Star Trek the game that make a noticeable difference to every Online on Xbox One, and had a chat with Samuel facet of the environment and characters. Not to be Wall about the upcoming move to console. left out, PC players will also see these upgrades after the console launch. 28

from the ground up. Thankfully, STOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s away missions have transitioned to console with very little trouble. Ground combat uses a traditional combination of analogue controls for movement and camera, while the right-hand buttons are primarily retained for combat. This is the most intuitive of the interface changes that Cryptic has made for console, and it makes exploring strange new worlds fairly straightforward.

This freedom results in interfaces and control systems that can be, quite plainly, incompatible with a sixteen-button controller, and explains why so few MMORPGs make it across to console platforms.

of options in between makes piloting a starship slightly more complex than conducting away missions. Piloting a Defiant class vessel, again, uses the analogue controls for movement and cameras, while much of the micromanagement involved in ship-to-ship hostilities has been assimilated into a new set of interfaces. A brand new radial menu allows Captains to quickly make

Cryptic has taken the only approach that was really viable and rebuilt the entire STO interface

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Bringing STO onto consoles is a far more ambitious endeavour than simply porting an existing franchise or adding a lick of paint. While the developers I talk to repeatedly note the increasing interoperability of code across todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gaming platforms, STO presents a very particular type of challenge. As a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, STO is incredibly complex. It has matured over six years to incorporate classic thirdperson RPG combat, space battles, and a number of peripheral systems, from crafting to customisable user interfaces. The seventy-two button keyboard and mouse controls allows for a freedom on the PC platform that is simply inconceivable on console.

Space, however, is a little less hospitable. When I tried space combat I found myself up against the Borg. Three-dimensional combat, shields, weapons, mission updates, and a dazzling myriad

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decisions on shields, weapons, and other sub systems. Such menus have the added benefit of being relatively familiar to console titles, meaning it should feel far more intuitive to console gamers than it did to me. Once selected, certain weapons can be aimed using targeting assistance and left on auto fire. This further reduces the amount of time players spend in menu systems, rather than avoiding enemy disruptors. Generally, the control systems of STO work well on console. Cryptic has taken the time to reconstruct everything from the combat controls to the queueing system, in order to make the game approachable for console players. Undoubtedly, Crypticâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s experience with the Neverwinter console transition shines through. Space combat is complex without becoming overwhelming, and away missions could easily fit into any consolebased RPG, though STO contains substantially more content than most of these. Having just launched, the console version of STO is free and

includes all but the latest updates to the game. Two major expansions give newcomers a massive amount of story to play through. So sit back in your Captainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s couch, pick up a controller and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll see you when you reach the Delta Quadrant.

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Dropzone Bring a Friend to the Party By: Ed “Screenager” Orr

Recently we strapped in and experienced SparkyPants studios attempt to drag the Real Time Strategy genre into a modern age, dominated by Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas. The ESL Clash in Cologne was just the start of a media assault. At Gamescom 2016, Dropzone made a definite impression on the show. The Dropzone booth was a hub of activity throughout the weekend, generating sizable crowds as gamers queued up to try the game or watch streamers battle on the Dropzone stage. I had the chance to sneak into the Dropzone booth early in the weekend and talk to Stuart Jeff, lead designer at Sparkypants Studios, about Gamescom’s reaction to Dropzone.

Sparkypants has made huge strides already and it is clear that, after the ESL Clash in Cologne, Dropzone will soon have a very healthy competitive scene. Already present are a slew of camera tools, the option to browse and watch games, as well as a customized versions of the game for broadcasters. However, I returned to Dropzone to see something a little bit different. Gamescom 2016 marked the arrival of a new game mode and Stuart took some time to steer a me through Dropzone’s 2v2 encounters. Designed as a complementary mode to the 1v1 experience, it allows players to team up with friends and experience the same game in an exciting new format. There is one certainty with 2v2 games, carnage. Utter and complete anarchy, followed by a lot of explosions. 2v2 follows the same basic principles

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as 1v1 gameplay. Mechanoids are deposited into the very same battle arenas, alien infestations still need culling, and the same objective based gameplay is present. Familiar rules should help ease players into a game mode that adds an additional layer of complexity. During my hands on, I just about managed to competently fumble my way through 2v2 games using fairly typical damage, control, and healer team composition. Play tends to find inexperienced players acting independently, only coming together to smash one set of mechanoids into another, or to engage each other at the centre of the map. However, the new game mode does have potential for organized players to assume

specific roles and engage in useful map rotation. Much like 1v1 play, when two teams meet things get ugly fast. Hectic clashes over the mapâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s central objective are frequent and unavoidable, quickly becoming cluttered with mechanoid carcasses, explosions, particle effects, and skill spam. With these encounters occasionally descending into a disorganized rabble, Sparkypants are introducing 2v2 as a way to play for fun, rather than ranks. Balancing pilots, mechanoids, and their respective load outs for 1v1 competition is still incomplete, and it is a difficult enough proposition without having to rework for a new game type. Despite these difficulties, 2v2 mode introduces the excitement and unpredictable nature of team

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based combat to Dropzone. Games are incredibly fun and allow players to have shared experiences, based on partnerships rather than rivalries. This mode also hints at the possibility that Dropzone might see enhanced social systems, and clans as players continue to create lasting alliances. While Sparkypants are reluctant to say anything concrete on these possibilities, a new game mode during beta testing is an exciting indicator of what the team behind Dropzone are already capable of. In essence, Dropzoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 2v2 play takes everything you already know about Dropzone and throws in the most unstable element possible, more people. It is fun, frustrating, and has real potential. It is a step in the right direction and when we discussed it with players, it left them hungry for more.

Watch Our Gamescom Interview at: http://gsch.info/a/167360

Learn More At:

https://dropzone.gameforge.com

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First Look at Gwent By: Ed “Screenager” Orr

Hands on with the newest Witcher game

ver since Blizzard first invited us all to gather round the Hearthstone and play a few rounds, virtual card games have been a common sight. The idea of applying cutting edge hardware to flipping a bit of paper no longer seems ludicrous, and the Collectible Card Game market doesn’t show any signs of folding soon. Recently I took some time to look at Gwent, the latest player to come to the table, and find out if CD Projekt Red have produced a winning hand at Gamescom 2016. 36

Gwent started life in the wider Witcher universe and was originally the brainchild of two designers at CD Projekt Red. This mini game eventually squirrelled its way into The Witcher 3, quickly becoming a phenomenon in its own right. Shortly after it appeared, players could be found travelling from tavern to tavern hunting NPCs, collecting cards, and battling patrons with their best Gwent decks. Hundreds of emails also followed, flooding

CD Projekt Red with demands to turn Gwent into a standalone game.

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In turn, Gwent is now a free to play title, due out soon on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. This standalone iteration of Gwent is fundamentally faithful to the original. Games are still played as best of three scenarios, with a variety of cards played in melee, ranged, or siege positions. Each card has a combat value, and the highest score at the end of each round wins. Hands are drawn just once and continue to be persistent across an entire game. This does not, however, mean that Gwent is a direct duplicate of its predecessor.

CD Projekt Red has done far more than just given Gwent a lick of paint and a polished game board. Numerous cards are voice acted and even react to events during the match. When sent off to die, the less fortunate cannon fodder can be found complaining and cursing, while others might highlight problems such as fog and frost.

This exceptional voice acting is also put to use in Gwentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s single player campaign. Not content with an already popular competitive mode, CD Projekt Red is expanding the Witcher universe even further with an open world RPG adventure. However, this is not a simple regurgitation of previous Witcher games. Looking more like a point and Vast visual improvements can be found across the click adventure than Witcher 3, the story features board. The playing surface, UI, and card decks both old and new characters from the Witcher. have all dispensed with functional simplicity and As players traverse the land, they can build their replaced it with rich tones, animations, and high adventure by making meaningful choices. CD resolution artwork. Premium cards are gorgeously Projekt Red is very clear that player choice matters rendered and make other games look positively during Gwentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s story campaign and there will be a flat in comparison. I talked to Brad Auty, animator number of diverging quest lines and consequences at CD Projekt Red, about these changes. based on player actions. This cumulates in over ten hours of content, interspersed with action on the Gwent board.

Preview Playing a hand on the Gwent board is not all about strength. Cunning and strategy are just as important, making it stand out amongst its peers. Numerous bonuses, from resurrection to weather conditions, can sway the tide of battle and benefit particular races. Monsters synergize well with frost and fog while the remaining three races, the Northern Realms, the Skellige, and the Scoiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;tael, all have their own particular set of traits that encourage a range of alternative tactics. In Gwent, playing to win does not always mean taking the most obvious approach. Cards which are discarded at the end of a round may be more useful in a later battle, or bonuses may be more important than raw power. I even found myself deliberately losing rounds and bluffing opponents 38

into using their strongest cards. CD Projekt Red has taken a proven concept and refined it, creating an outstanding experience that stands out amongst the competition. Gwent is everything you would expect from the team that brought us The Witcher series, and with beta due on October 25, there is not long to wait on this adventure.

Watch our Interview & Share Your Comments At: http://gsch.info/a/165321

Learn More At: https://www.playgwent.com/en

Follow on Twitter: @PlayGwent

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Returning to the Dredgion By: Ed “Screenager” Orr Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to get a glimpse at NCSoft’s newest property, Master x Master. (http://gsch.info/a/133281) Several months later, the first western alpha test went live. Between 24 June and 27th June, the general public sliced, shot, and pummelled their way through everything that MxM had to offer. While the game servers strained under the weight of expectant fans, I took the opportunity to revisit an intriguing title. Taking place sometime in an unspecified future, MxM finds Earth decimated by the SYND, a hostile alien force. Who are the galaxy’s only hope against this destruction? A mismatched group of heroes, known as Masters. This thinly veiled pretence holds out just long enough to get players into the game, throw in a bunch of colourful characters, add some weapons, and proceed to let off a whole heap of

explosions. A deep narrative vein is hardly critical to games like MxM. Other contemporary MOBAs such as Heroes of the Storm, SMITE, Paladins, and even Overwatch dispense with lore almost as soon as the shooting begins. MxM is no different. Even the mandatory tutorials are unencumbered by superfluous detail. The game shoves a gun in your hand, teaches you how to pull the trigger, and releases you into the game lobby. From here on in, the action begins.

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The central lobby, known as the Dredgion, provides direct access to the majority of the game’s content. A plethora of PvE instances are accessible, from the lush forests of Karith to the dystopian wasteland around Nuuran. Difficulty varies from a placid story mode, allowing players to ease themselves into the game, through to Nightmare encounters, which can become incredibly painful. Even during story mode, destruction reigns as parties of up to three players blow through a wide variety of enemies. Cannon fodder spawns with such frequency that there is little time to get bored while running dungeons in MxM.

that has worked wonderfully for Blizzard, with Heroes of the Storm, and it seems NCSoft are merrily following this path. While the inclusion of fan favorites from other titles is a fantastic way to appeal to NCSoft’s existing player base, MxM’s dungeons are where this approach really thrives.

Aion’s Fire Temple was open to players during the alpha event, featuring an appearance by Kromede the Corrupt. As a lapsed Aion player, this tweaked all sorts of nostalgia for me as my party navigated the instance revealing nuggets of lore that I thought I’d forgotten. Blade & Soul’s Blackram Narrows, and The Ant Nest, from Lineage II, have One of the more unique elements of MxM’s already appeared in Korea and if you look hard dungeons is the inclusion of content from NCSoft’s enough you might even spot some familiar faces existing library of titles. Player characters from in the lobby. Lineage II, Aion, Guild Wars 2, Blade & Soul, and Wildstar rub shoulders and cross swords with This game’s action combat works equally well the new heroes of MxM. Mondo Zax, Rytlock during PvP. Competitive play comes in two Brimstone, Pohwaran, Kat the Cat, and Jinsoyun flavours, both of which are indistinguishable from are just a selection of the Masters borrowed from other MOBA titles. The rules of the battle arena more than a decade of gaming. It is an approach are simple. The teams face off against each other 41

Preview in a race to kill more of the enemy team than they kill of you. A shifting configuration of obstacles keep things from getting too repetitive and the constrained size of the area results in a frantic push and pull as the battle swings back and forth between teams. The Titan Ruins is an altogether more tactical game which closely replicates the type of gameplay saw League of Legends reach astronomical heights. Two teams, once again, battle across a map containing all the elements that have become typical of a MOBA. Creeps march across a series of lanes, colliding with defensive towers, while players skirmish to push the tide of battle using all of the maps available bonuses. These bonuses include a series of heroic warriors and the Titans. Massive lumbering NPCs that can smash through an enemyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s defenses. Spawning every hundred points, Titans are a regular feature that keep matches from becoming stale. Once again, this mode of play is far from innovative but it is already exceptionally polished and a great deal of fun. 42

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Steering Masters through the narrows of a dungeon or crushing another team in PvP has not fundamentally changed since my preview in January. Players continue to control a set of two hot swappable characters using a standard WASD configuration and a small set of active abilities.

However, MxM compensates for this is by ensuring stats have little negative impact on casual play and by summarizing the maze of information using one succinct heading, Playstyle.

taunts, and combos. Character power and skills are customizable with around twenty six stats influencing each Master’s performance. These can be enhanced using the game’s node system, allowing players to slot character boosts such as dexterity and defense. Weapons and skills are also upgradeable, while three classes of augmentation, Kinetic, Helix, and Ardent all influence a Master’s success against specific types of enemy. These features are reminiscent of Wildstar’s stat system upon launch. Upgrades seem incredibly layered, with a number of disparate naming conventions.

them, creating an engaging variety of content that never slows down or feels like a chore to play. If you have flown through the skies of Atreia, staked a claim on Nexus, or entered the mists of Tyria, then you might also want to check out MxM during the next testing cycle. You can sign up now, or find out more info, on the official website.

While MxM cannot be described as truly original, it is a genuine joy to play. Content is accessible, Many recognizable elements of combat from varied, and well-paced. Rather than produce a NCSoft’s MMORPG line up are present, including derivative copy of other successful games, the team sprinting, dodges, healing, crowd control, at NCSoft has taken existing ideas and polished

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The Metronomicon An RPG That Dances to a Different Tune? By Ed ‘Screenaer’ Orr Many Role Playing Games tread a well-worn path. Heroes set out on an epic adventure filled with danger mystery and intrigue. Over the years, I thought I’d seen every variation of the novice hero take on every type of dragon. Recently, however, I found an RPG with real soul. To be more precise, I found an RPG with funk, synth, and some epic beats. At Gamescom 2016 I was lucky enough to get hands on with The Metronomicon.

characters, unlocking a total of sixty-four abilities and a variety of cut scenes as they progress. Each character can also loot increasingly shiny gear to improve their stats, throughout their quest. The traditional trinity is even easy to spot, with a series of tank, damage, and support characters available to choose from the off. Seeing As a fully formed RPG, The the familiar tropes of an RPG, I Metronomicon contains a jumped straight into combat with complete single player campaign a fairly gruesome monstrosity. that takes adventurers on an Combat is where The The Metronomicon is an indie epic set of quests. Players build Metronomicon changes RPG with a very cool twist. Rather a party from a series of eight tempo and introduces a rather 44

than dance to the same tune as every other RPG, it fuses rhythm games with the traditional RPG genre. Developed by a team of four, led by Danny Garfield, The Metronomicon is due to go into early access during September and I was lucky enough to get some hands on time with this title.

Inside Gamescom 2016

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ingenious twist. While some of us are used to a little background music during battle, these warriors are accompanied by some cutting edge electronic beats and synth waves. Several well known electronic artists have contributed to the soundtrack and if youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve heard of Johnny Urine, YACHT, or J-Punch then you will appreciate The Metronomiconâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s synthetic sounds. Aside from the sheer quality of the music, and the

fantastic choreography, it introduces a whole new form of rhythmic combat. Banishing daemons of the night requires players to successfully follow the rhythm of the soundtrack. Each character is assigned their own backing track and following the choreographed prompts, allows characters to cast a variety of spells. As a song continues to progress, completing further sections channels higher

tiers of ability. Anybody who has ever picked up an axe and jumped into Guitar Hero should not find The Metronomicon troubling. In fact, Danny Garfield, President at Puuba Games, recently configured a Guitar hero controller to do just that. I made do with a control pad at Gamescom and found a recognisable series of visual tracks appear above a character when they are selected. Following the up, down, left, and

Preview right prompts as they spawned was sufficient to make short work of my enemies, and should not be overly challenging for any player.

Disco lights and glowing lasers tear across the dance battles making a refreshing change from every other gloomy dungeon, procedurally generated to look identical to any other dank hole. The Metronomiconâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s visual style It all makes for a really enjoyable is just as bright as its soundtrack. experience. If you found your It mixes retro stylings with rhythm with games like Crypt an almost effervescent palette of the Necrodancer then grab that threatens to burst out a sword, shield, and your best of the screen, reminding me disco shoes when you try The somewhat of Freedom Planet. Metronomicon.

Watch our Developer Interview and Discuss at: http://gsch.info/a/167337

Learn More At: http://gsch.info/q/metro

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On The Floor of

PAX West 2016 By: Benjamin “Foghladha” Foley In this my sixth trip to PAX West, formerly PAX Prime, I was able to see the convention in a whole new light. This was the first year I went to PAX West not as a gamer, but as a journalist. I spent my days interviewing really awesome people and met a ton of really interesting people. I was invited to a few private hands-on showings where I was able to see games long before they’re ready to show.

decided to go to our very first one to show our support to the RIFT team who we were heavily involved with at the time. We also had the Guild Wars 2 team showing off Guild Wars 2 and this was a highly important touch point for us. What we found was a fun and friendly conference filled with games from wall to wall. For six years we’ve been anxiously looking forward to going to PAX West.

PAX West is an annual convention for both electronic and board games, but it is also a massive gathering of Cosplayers from around the country. From simple costumes to intricate designs cosplay is a major part of this conference. You can’t go a few feet without seeing another wonderful design.

This years conference was so large it spilled over into the streets of Seattle. Not only did it fill the entire convention center, but it also filled 3 surrounding hotels. Magic the Gathering even rented a whole street to close down and set up carnival tents.

Six years ago, my wife and I 48

World of Tanks rented an empty parking lot so they could run things over with tanks. Yes, you

heard me, they were out and about driving tanks in downtown Seattle. They even brought out Bobby Wagner and Richard Sherman to ride on the tanks as they ran stuff over. On the floor there were so many games that I wasn’t even able to see them all across 3 days of being on the floor. Games typically are in one of four groups. The AAA titles take up the main conference room floor center stage, followed by the AA (mostly crowdfunded projects) games up on the 6th floor. Indie games get special treatment and have a section of the main floor dedicated to indie titles. Lastly Board games and card games fill the lower floors and even have some open play areas. It’s a great show and wonderful experience. I highly recommend the Penny Arcade Expos to any gamer.

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Scott Hartsman Talks Guilds, Games, Corgis and More By: Benjamin â&#x20AC;&#x153;Foghladhaâ&#x20AC;? Foley We managed to catch up with Scott Hartsman, CEO of Trion Worlds, at PAX West 2016 in Seattle, WA for a short video interview. In our interview Scott discusses the development challenges with regard to differences in perception of guilds and player bases from the eastern and western regions. He shares how corgis infiltrated Trion Worlds and started making their way into their games. In addition he shares some information about RIFT, ArcheAge, Trove, Atlas Reactor and Devilian in this general overall look at the Trion Worlds big picture. Watch the interview below to hear some interesting responses to questions asked by the Gaiscioch Community. Watch our Interview with Scott at: http://gsch.info/a/167331

Artist Spotlight:

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Chamille “Rin” Mies

Follow RinTheYordle At: http://rintheyordle.weebly.com http://twitch.tv/rintheyordle http://twitter.com/rintheyordle

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Guns ofPAX Icarus Alliance West Impressions By: Benjamin “Foghladha” Foley

Years ago I picked up the original Guns of Icarus out of curiosity. As a closet steampunk fan, I thought it was a cool concept and had a lot of potential. Unfortunately for me at the time I knew nobody playing the game and as a full PvP game I was schooled in the hard lessons of Newbie University. So I put the game down and moved on to other things.

The team at Muse Games listened and came up with the concept of Guns of Icarus Alliance. In Alliance Mode you will be taking on warplanes, airships, and gigantic epic world bosses using a wide range of customizable airships. You will bring along up to 3 friends for each airship and you can have up to 4 airships per match totalling 16 players per PvE battle.

But that’s not where the story ends for Guns of Icarus. Like myself, many players longed for a PvE side of the game. One that would allow players to forge relationships with others and practice driving one of these massive airships before rushing off into a full fledged war against other players.

In addition to a whole PvE side of the game Alliance brings factions which players can choose which faction to play and contribute to an overall persistent war between factions. As players increase their levels they will gain access to many unlocks including costumes, weapons, and even airships.

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In our short hands-on demo at PAX West we were able to jump behind the wheel of one of these airships and take it for a spin. With two developers and a member from the community helping us we managed to become victorious in two different campaigns missions. The AI opponents were smart and at times I found they had moved to flank us by hiding in valleys, and even pulled a few surprise rear attacks. The bosses were incredibly tough and once even got the better of our team that included 2 developers. All in all each of the matches we played lasted between 15 and 20 minutes and we were begging for more.

As a player who originally walked away from the game, Alliance has brought me back and I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t wait to get my hands on the wheel again. The new faction system, alliance pve missions, and the new clan system will help bridge that gap of being the new guy on the block to being a formidable opponent. You can check out all of the features included in alliance by going to: http://gunsoficarus.com/

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The Expanse of Dual Universe By: Benjamin “Foghladha” Foley While I was at PAX West I had the pleasure of meeting JC Baillie, an expert in AI & Robotics turned game developer, who is currently building the new space exploration MMO Dual Universe. His company Novaquark began with a vision to create a procedurally generated universe that can expand to an unlimited scale. In this single shard game, players take on the role of one of a human tasked with locating and settling a new home for humanity. They will all begin on the same planet and venture from their central base in search of places to settle, farm resources, and claim as their own.

based ships, space stations, and even completely modifiable planets. We’ve seen games similar to that concept before, however the major difference I saw was the ability to build the ship the way you want. You can create small ships, large ships, fast ships, slow ships, space stations, and epic war ships. The only limit is your creativity and the number of resources available. It’s like a grownup version of Legos, except bigger.

Crafting

Dual Universe provides you the ease of voxel creation, with a pallet of preset pieces like This is a massively multiplayer space exploration thrusters, weapons, cockpits, buildings to allow and survival game, with fully customizable voxel 54

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quick and easy building. Each object you build is automatically saved so that you can duplicate it rapidly in the future. Building your own custom templates is a good way to speed up production.

Part of crafting will be venturing across various planets in search of materials needed to craft stronger ships and fortifications. Ultimately the galaxy is shaped by players.

This isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t one of those survival games where they expect you to swing a pick for 30 seconds to clear a layer of dirt. You can grow and shrink your target shape to the size you want to remove and rapidly dig or build as you see fit. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perfect for artists akin to digital illustration and 3d modeling.

Organizations (Guilds) Guilds in this game are known as Organizations and can claim territory and set permissions for that territory to allow members or guests access to various areas and control who can dig, build, and destroy their structures. When you settle a planet

Preview or build a space station you can setup automatic defenses to open fire on any hostile ships or players that try to enter without the correct access. You can even build an underground base with hidden entrances. Guilds can forge alliances and declare war on other guilds. They help build the economy and can buy and sell on the open market. But thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not all! Organizations can also include sub organizations that work under a heirarchy of the primary organization. You can make a materials collection organization, a combat ready

organization, and a settlement organization and wrap it all in your primary organization. This system gives communities complete control over their rosters and helps give players a clear objective.

PvP Similar to EVE, organizations can declare war on each other and work on destroying each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ships and homesteads. These epic battles will be a test of defense building and skill.

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The nice thing, however, is that if they destroy one of your ships you have a saved template of that ship and all you need is the resources to craft it once again.

Advanced Users For the more advanced users they can program their own AI for ships using LUA, a common modding language made popular by World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online and RIFT. Everything from ship handling to defenses can be controlled by player made AI allowing players the ability to have absolute control over their ships.

Help Crowdfund Dual Universe This project is currently running a crowdfunding campaign for the final leg of itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s production. You can help contribute and watch their progress by visiting http://gsch.info/q/dualuniverse

Watch the Gaiscioch Magazine Interview with JC Baillie at: http://gsch.info/a/166164 Learn More At: http://www.dualthegame.com/

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Getting Visceral in Shadow Warrior 2 By: Benjamin “Foghladha” Foley

he nineties were nuts. For those of you that weren’t alive yet, or maybe didn’t have the joy of PC gaming on a new Voodoo video controller, we had a whole wave of testosterone filled, action packed, over the top, wisecracking, FPS titles that were rude, crude, and would put chest hair on your goldfish if it watched you play. Some of the more popular titles included Wolfenstein, DOOM, Duke

Nukem, Serious Sam and that one your mama wouldn’t let you play Shadow Warrior.

and Software Etc. This time their cranking the dial all the way up this time.

The 1997 classic Shadow Warrior was brutal and crude game that would inspire many other games and movies. In 2013 Flying Wild Hog remade the classic for PC, PS4, and XBOX One. Now they return again to bring us Shadow Warrior 2, 20 years later after the original hit the shelves of Electronic Boutique

In my short hands-on at PAX West, I saw a greatly improved version of the remake that was released in 2013. This time our hero Lo Wang can bring up to 3 additional friends in one heck of an epic cooperative bloodbath. The entire story campaign is available to play 4-player.

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Flying Wild Hog took the best features of their remake of Shadow Warrior and then pieced it together with some of the community favorite ideas including upgradeable weapons and armor and a new procedurally generated environment. Another fantastic improvement is its brutal damage system which literally mature rated game and you can allows you to slice off a hand if expect a whole lot of mature you like. You can slice and dice content. Even in my short demo and mince your opponents into looking at the moon or finding tiny little digestible pieces if you an ancient relic will leave your so desire. jaw on the floor and your mind wondering did I just see that? This game has no shortage of punchy one liners, fantastic 90â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s If Duke Nukem had a dirty little humor, and a wicked fun combat cousin, his name would be Lo system that will keep you playing Wang. Compared, Duke looks for hours. This game is 150% a like saint. Sorry Duke, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a

new wisecracking hero in town. Pre-order this gem and get a Chainsaw Katana! Did I just say that? A Chainsaw Katana! WHAT!? See what I mean? This game is nuts!

Learn More At: http://flyingwildhog.com/games

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Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 Takes The Rails Off Its Winning Formula By: Benjamin “Foghladha” Foley The moon shines over the horizon as I creep ever closer to the booming of laughter in the distance. A soft rain turns to a downpour covering my sound as I nudge my way into the perfect perch. In the cover of night I deploy a handheld drone which I use to locate my target. As my spotter tells me to move closer, my range finder tells me the target is 700 meters from my location. The wind blows 5 knots to the north east. I adjust my score to 600m and offset it 60

to compensate for the wind. I line up my shot just above my target’s head, hold my breath, and squeeze the trigger. The ringing of the shot is masked by thunder and as time slows

my target falls to the ground. My spotter jumps in excitement saying that was an amazing shot. These were my first moments in Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3.

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From the ground up this game aims to capture the very essence of the life of a sniper. Filled with scouting the perfect location, crawling through mud, and planning your escape. This isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t your traditional shooter. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a highly encounter driven battle of cat and mouse. Every mission you accept, you can execute as you see fit, when you see fit. You can take your target from a distance, use the environment to kill them, go in guns blazing, or even infiltrate the combat and dispose of them silently. Your only limitation is your creativity and skill. You can choose the path of the Sniper, laying waste to your foes from a 61

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distance, become a ghost and use stealth to dispose of your targets, or go guns blazing as a warrior, wielding powerful assault rifles, shotguns, machine guns, and even explosives. There is no theme park approach to how you engage your enemy. Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 is set to ship on January 27th, 2017 on PS4, XBOX One, and PC and will be available digitally on many distribution platforms.

Learn More at: http://www.sniperghostwarrior3.com/

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Hands-on with Outward By: Benjamin “Foghladha” Foley I will admit this, I knew little about Outward going in. I had just seen a press release a few days prior and it visually reminded me of the old Gothic series that came out of Germany in the late 90s. I’m a sucker for these style of games so this one I made a special request to score an interview with a developer. Little did I know, Guillaume BoucherVidal the President & Game Designer that I would be interviewing was actually a Gaiscioch member.

Guillaume lead me through a dungeon where I had to carry a lantern on my backpack to see where we’re going. Yet, if I had my backpack on I was unable to dodge. To allow myself some mobility I had to drop my bag and lantern on the ground. There are a lot of subtleties in the game that bring an aspect of realism into the game.

After a while we defeated the boss and made our way to the surface. Once we were outdoors He joined me in a cooperative playthrough of Guillaume showed my how to setup a camp and a special dungeon map that they set up for the carry out some basic crafting. He tried to teach show, explaining the core mechanics as we went. me how to cook but I went a little ahead of his The game felt like a cross between Dark Souls instructions and ended up eating my meat raw. and Risen with a heavy Elder Scrolls Morrowind Not as effective as, you know, cooking it first but it influence. got the job done.

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The story behind Outward doesn’t make you into some supernatural hero meant to save humanity. You’re a simple adventurer and explorer out for survival. You can play Outward solo or with a friend both locally and online. In this game you

Outward also has dynamic defeat scenarios that place you in unique situations upon defeating. Some of these situations might include being held for ransom in a bandit camp or being dragged out into the woods, stripped, and left for dead.

will need to eat, drink, and sleep, and your foes will The game is constantly auto-saved, so there is no be more than just npcs. The weather will impact “woops, let me load my save.” Every defeat forges your gameplay based on what you’re wearing. You your path forward. can get an infectious disease, and you will find Learn More At: terrifying creatures that wander the night. http://www.ninedotsstudio.com/outward Twitter: @ninedotsstudio

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FRAGMENTED MEMORIES TAKE FOCUS IN

BY: BENJAMIN “FOGHLADHA” FOLEY

Imagine waking up in the middle of a pile of rubble. Confused and disoriented, you no longer remember who or where you are. Everything seems strange to you. After staggering around you realize you were at the center of a terrorist attack and one of only a few survivors. Robots flood the scene in search of survivors, and as you fall to the

ground you’re greeted by the face of an android. You wake in an infirmary and the first moments teach you how to move and interact. As you interact with various objects you begin to have flashes of your past life. But that’s not all. You begin to have flashes of an alternate life as well.

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State of Mind is an adventure game by Daedalic Entertainment where you play a anti-robotics journalist who discovers he has been part of an experiment to take a human mind and give it a virtual persona. Through your adventure, you will be flipping your point of view between your main character and your avatar alternate, as you solve mysteries and uncovering the truth of your past.

Learn more about State of Mind at: http://www.daedalic.de/en/game/State_of_Mind or http://store.steampowered.com/app/437630/

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Join the Persistent Online War in Foxhole By: Benjamin “Foghladha” Foley There are a lot of MMO’s coming to market these days that all look like the same idea with a slightly different twist. Clapfoot Inc, the team behind Fortified, has an unique concept in mind to separate them from the droves of other MMO’s coming to market. In Foxhole, you play a single soldier fighting in a massive war where every other soldier on the battlefield is an actual player. We’ve all seen the countless battles where players stormed the beaches of Normandy. Imagine that this time instead of NPCs randomly dying next to you, there are real players fighting alongside you. Coordinating, planning, and executing strategies.

Foxhole offers dynamic battle conditions including the time of day, weather, and terrain that can provide your forces with an advantage in some situations. You will capture and set up supply lines to keep your front lines equipped. All the while battling over territories in an endless tug of war between thousands of players. With a unique top-down art style, Foxhole blends traditional tactical combat classics titles like Fallout Tactics and Commandos with modern day technology and real-time persistent battles. Teams must work together to change the course of history. You can learn more by visiting: http://www.foxholegame.com/

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Step into the Shoes of your Local Dispatch, with 911 Operator By: Benjamin “Foghladha” Foley In 911 Operator by Jutsu Games , you play a dispatcher at a city of your choice. There are hundreds of downloadable cities with real world cases that you will have to deploy Police, Fire, and Paramedics based on their 911 calls. In my short time playing at PAX West, I was able to play my hometown of Portland and had several calls pop up that were convincing enough to believe it happened. I even had a caller call in to report a car accident several days after it happened.

You will need to assess the situation, manage your emergency units carefully and react to the most critical calls quickest. While this title was designed as a game, I can see some serious applications in training and preparing to be an actual dispatcher. This would even be a wonderful game for schools to use much like they did Oregon Trail in my day. If you’d like to see the game first hand check it out on Steam or head over to: http://www.jutsugames.com/911

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Cosplay Behind The Mask By: Ed â&#x20AC;&#x153;Screenagerâ&#x20AC;? Orr This issue, the Gaiscioch team has been all caught up in the con fever. During McM London, PAX West and Gamescom we have seen some amazing new games, stunning stage shows, and outstanding cosplay. For the uninitiated, the word cosplay is an amalgamation of costume play and many consider it performance art. Fans of various forms of fiction create and don costumes of their heroes, for fun and sometimes for friendly competition. Internet legends quarrel on the specific origin of cosplay but it more generally rose to prominence in its current form during the 1980s and 1990s. After Takahashi Nobuyuki inspired Japanese readers with tales of American convention

masquerades, anime and manga fans began to dress as their favourite characters. The practice exploded in popularity and as Japanese pop culture began to permeate mainstream western sensibilities, cosplay naturally migrated to the rest of the world. Cosplay is now a worldwide phenomenon. International tournaments are commonplace, cosplay personalities are massive stars, and games even employ cosplayers to bring their characters to life. With so many outstanding creations at this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s conventions, we wanted to get an insight into the players behind the mask.

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Artist Spotlight: @Darkphibre | http://photos.darkphibre.com/

Best of PAX WEST 2016 Cosplay

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The Best of Tom Mathews Photography

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Inside Cosplay with Kazy Cosplay By: Ed “Screenager” Orr I bumped into Kazy Cosplay at McM convention, some of you might have seen her cosplay on the Guild Wars 2 twitter feed. Since then she’s gone on to be invited to Gamescom by the Black Desert Online team to show off her work.

like Guild Wars 2 or Black Desert Online. I’m a cat lover and own about 20 cats at home (yes, 20 as in twenty!) as my mother shows and breeds them. In my spare time I also enjoy the countryside and horse riding. Despite currently studying a scientific subject, I think that more creative things Thank you for spending time with have always been my passion in life. In my senior us at Gaiscioch Magazine to answer years of school I took Textiles alongside my science subjects which opened my mind to using materials our questions. To start things off, creatively in art form. It was more art with textiles, can you tell us a little bit about rather than dressmaking or sewing. We used all yourself and what inspired you to kinds of crazy materials like baby’s dummies, pins, get into Cosplay? pipettes or any object with interesting shapes. Hello and thank you so much for the interview! To We’d manipulate them, cut them, cover them in say a little about myself, my real life name is Lucy latex or wax and then create headpieces or some and I’m currently studying Computer Science at fashion piece to be worn. My teacher at the time University. I’m 21 years old and an avid video game was absolutely amazing. She really encouraged player, specifically adoring fantasy MMORPGs me to keep experimenting with new materials, 78

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and being braver in how I went about my crafting. She inspired my interest in costumes and fashion which I think later encouraged me to make more ambitious cosplays. I heard about conventions through a friend in my guild in Guild Wars, and decided to attend my first convention in 2011. I bought a pink wig, and altered a shirt; adding frills and ribbons to make an anime-Âesque school uniform. It was nothing special and my mother helped me mostly with the sewing! At MCMs, cosplay is extremely common so it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t out of place to go in a costume. I think what really inspired me was seeing an amazing WoW night elf cosplay with incredible intricacy. It had never crossed my

mind that I could bring alive the armours that I love so much in the games I play. Armours were definitely my playing point in most games, and I often used to design my own for fun. It was a mix of fashion, fantasy and games that was amazing! Then the concept that I could enjoy crafting them and then wear them is just perfect. Can you tell us a little about your first experience with Cosplay? What was running through your head when you wore your first creation in public?

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I remember wearing my pink wig and anime school girl outfit on the train up to London with my friend. I received many strange looks and ‘discrete’ stares, but I eventually just ignored it. I’m never going to meet those people again in my life, and if I did, they wouldn’t recognise me. As we approached closer to the convention, there were a lot more people in costume which was almost a relief, and I felt ‘normal’ again! Being in costume at comic con is just such a thrilling experience. It gave me a confidence and happiness I’d never felt doing anything else. The feeling is addictive! I once worn my Miqo’te cosplay in public, whilst taking a bus to the convention. I wore a coat over my costume as my stomach was bare and it was cold outside. As far as people could see, I was a girl in normal everyday clothes, adorning cat ears and a tail. I think not having the costume visible made people think I was just weird, rather than being in costume! It amused a lot of people though, so I took it in my stride and just smiled and waved back. It probably made their day so it just makes me happy. I actually enjoy the shock factor now of walking in public places in costume!

Do you ever have any stage fright? If so how did you conquer it? Yes! Always… and I haven’t conquered it! I’ve never been the confident kind of person and even giving speeches to small groups is nerve wracking for me. I’ve been pushing myself a lot more recently, and entered my first competition at Manchester MCM in 2015. I was shaking so much and I thought I was about to faint just before going on stage. Through perseverance I feel like I’m improving and now I force myself to enter any competition I can. One day I would love to go on stage and be entirely confident but I just haven’t reached that point yet! Before I go on stage I try to get in character, be confident, remember to smile, and remind myself to have fun, but I really don’t think I’ve conquered my fears... Perhaps some day! Other cosplayers and those helping backstage in the competitions have been really supportive, it’s such a kind and fun atmosphere, with a definite sense of community. There’s no judgement or unkindness, everyone is open to different things. As long as you’re having fun, that’s the most important part! This year at

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as the Pearl Abyss Developer team who had come all the way from Korea, including the CEO and President of the game! Ahhh! And they wanted pictures with ?me! Nothing is more rewarding than the game developers themselves appreciating your cosplay. Everyone from the BDO team was amazing and entirely welcoming and helpful to me. Upon leaving I had to control my tears because I felt so grateful for the experience! I never imagined to have that experience but I am so, so grateful and happy for it. Let’s take a look at the steps to come up with a great Cosplay design. You’ve decided what you want to be, what’s your process for creating a character? the Manchester MCM I entered the competition with my friend Tarian Cosplay and it was a lot less of a scary experience having a partner on stage, so I think we are going to try more duo competitions in our costumes. We even won a judge’s choice award for our armour making so that was an amazing reward! So fast forward to today, In a couple of years you’ve gone from McM in London to Gamescom. You were invited to visit the Black Desert Online stage, at Gamescom 2016, in front of massive crowds. Did you ever imagine your hobby would take you there? Attending Gamescom was an unreal experience. I first saw that Black Desert Online was attending Gamescom, to which I thought that would be the most amazing thing to go to in my costume! It’s rare you get to show off your cosplay to the team and be recognised by fans who would likely be at the stall too. I emailed them as there were no tickets for sale and the Kakao team kindly gave me exhibitor passes! I was ecstatic! I had the privilege of meeting the Black Desert Online team, as well

Once I’ve decided on my cosplay, my next step is to gather reference pictures and stare at them... for many days on end! I’ll get obsessed and stare at them on any occasion I can, so I usually save a copy on my phone. I try to figure out what materials I need to use, how I’ll attach things, and how I’ll build certain armour parts and think about whether they’ll articulate or not. Often in games armour doesn’t move as it would naturally or there are floating parts not attached to anything... So that is a problem to tackle! I’ll also try to figure out if there are base pieces of clothing I can buy and then alter, so I don’t need to make things from scratch. Shopping for my cosplay is probably my favourite part. After then, I’ll make my own patterns. For armour pieces like headpieces or shoulder pieces I usually expand some screenshots of my character to my own size (for example, compare the thickness of the arm in the screenshot to mine), and then trace my screen with tracing paper to get an accurate design in terms of proportion and shape. A difficult part of creating a cosplay is getting the proportions right, as video game characters often have unrealistic human proportions... Smaller waists, longer legs, etc. Half of the challenge is patterning the pieces to make it look as in proportion as possible, but 81

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also to fit my human body. Once I have my flat patterns, I’ll either start sewing if it’s a fabric piece or I start playing around with craft foam to make a 3D shape, then cover it with worbla (a thermoplastic) for armour pieces. After then it’ll be adding details, fixtures, and finally priming and painting.

me, especially in the con crunch time a week or so before the convention when I am stressing out majorly! She’s extremely supportive of my cosplay and sometimes she’ll help me with more monotonous tasks like painting layers of wood glue on my worbla to prime it, or paint my gemstones. She is utterly amazing!

What’s been your most difficult component, part, or material to work with?

When making my Black Desert Cosplay, my friend, Tarian Cosplay, was also making an armour set from the same game. We met often to have ‘cosathons’, where we brought all of our supplies to my house and just crafted straight for a week or so. Although we worked individually on our costumes, it was handy to have someone else there to bounce ideas off one another or to support each other.

Making armoured boots!!! So far all of my leg armour pieces haven’t been the standard ‘front panel with straps that secure it around the back’ kind of thing. They’ve been fully encasing leg armour... Which is a trouble because how do you make it join?? The calf shape is such a complicated shape to pattern with foam and worbla and you need about ten hands to hold it against your leg whilst shaping it. Then you have the complicated task of fitting two sides to sit flush against each other. Gahh! I’m definitely remaking the leg armour for my Valkyrie cosplay. It actually damaged me! I still have the wounds to prove it and I don’t have all of the feeling in the side of my foot. The leg pieces for that cosplay were very complicated as in the game they articulated at the knee in ways the laws of physics do not allow. Making my bodice was quite a challenge too. An encasing bodice around the waist and stomach wouldn’t allow any movement or for me to sit down, and I know how important sitting down is after making my Guild Wars 2 cosplay! It was like a jigsaw puzzle as I patterned the bodice into pieces all attached to each other with elastic. This made sure it would all articulate so that I could bend forward and twist. Do you work alone or do others contribute to your work? I make all of my costumes by myself, although I have to thank my mum too! I usually start my big cosplay projects when I return home for the holidays. My mum takes care of me and feeds 82

What went through your head before you stepped out onto the Gamescom floor for the first time? I was excited for sure! I wondered what the fans and developers would think of my costume. So far my cosplay hadn’t been recognised as the game is not that well known at the moment, and being recognised by a fan of the franchise is the biggest compliment to me when I make a cosplay! Gamescom ended up exceeding all of my expectations, and luckily one of the community developers from the game recognised me right away from passing by me and took me over to the Black Desert booth! Everyone was really welcoming and the stage performances were really fun too. I was really overwhelmed by how huge Gamescom was! It’s definitely the biggest convention I’ve been to. There’s so many flashy stalls and lights it’s incredible how much effort goes into it. On a more serious note, harassment. Have you had to deal with it while in cosplay? I suppose the answer depends on your definition of harassment. I rarely receive inappropriate

next project! Currently I’m looking at some more Black Desert Online armours, as they are just so beautiful and intricate. At the moment I am in love with the Witch Awakening outfit! I’m also looking at the Dark Elf concept art which looks incredible, although I will have to wait for a 3D render. I’m also considering Mercy from Overwatch or another Guild Wars 2 armour the Carapace butterfly armour is my favourite! I think for my next project I’d like to cross over some programming from my computer science side and perhaps incorporate programmable lights or movement. I’m always looking at innovative materials and how I can use them in my next cosplay.

Where do you go from here? Have you got any new projects you are working on?

Follow Kazy Cosplay at: http://www.facebook.com/kazycosplay http://www.twitter.com/Kazy_UK

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comments about my cosplay to my face. As far as I can remember I had one inappropriately childish comment from an older lady at Gamescom (It was in German though, so before someone translated it for me she was already gone)! Sometimes online comments are a little harder to deal with, as people are a lot braver to comment online and forget that there is a real person behind the screen reading their comments. The positive comments and reactions far outweigh the few rude comments, so on the whole I try not to let it get to me. I’ve never experienced any badgering or rude pestering regarding my cosplay though, generally everyone is very polite and kind.

From the moment I finish making my cosplay I’m already looking at reference pictures for my

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Behind the Mask with Demorafairy Cosplay By: Ed “Screenager” Orr Fans of Guild Wars 2 may be familiar with Demorafairy Cosplay. Her Mesmer cosplay, which made an appearance at the World Cosplay Masters, is just the latest in a line of award winning pieces. Before she blinked away, we asked her a few questions about her experiences in Cosplay. Thank you for spending time with us at Gaiscioch Magazine to answer our questions. To start things off, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what inspired you to get into Cosplay? I started cosplaying 8 years ago when a friend 84

found out about a convention and we all decided to go in cosplay. Other than cosplay I play games, do photography and occasionally make digital art, and in real life I’m a software developer. Can you tell us a little about your first experience with Cosplay? What was running through your head when you wore your first creation in public? I asked my mum to help me with my first costume, she ended up getting really into it! The first time I wore it in public was at the train station on the way to the con, and most of what was running through my head was panic about missing the train! I

Do you ever have any stage fright? If so how did you conquer it? Not really, I was always into drama and acting as a kid so am happy getting on stage. Plus, it’s all for fun, if something goes wrong it doesn’t really matter. I’d get much more nervous making a presentation to important people at work! So fast forward to today, You’ve competed in the Cosplay World Masters, against competition from across Europe as well as collecting numerous judge’s awards. Did you

ever imagine your hobby would take you there? I never expected it, it feels kinda crazy! Cosplay World Masters was an amazing experience, I loved spending ages trying to get my costume perfect for it, but I did really have to rush it in the end. I hope to be able to enter something similar in the future, but with a costume I’ve not had to rush!

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was with a bunch of other people in cosplay so wasn’t embarrassed to be in public dressed up, and of course by the time we got to the con, loads of people were in cosplay. It was really fun and exciting, especially the thrill of seeing everything that was at a con, as none of us really knew what to expect. We got so excited seeing people cosplay our favourite characters. To be honest I wasn’t really thinking about my own cosplay that much, I was cosplaying a character that barely anyone recognised so didn’t get much attention from other people, I was too busy getting swept up in the excitement of the con.

Let’s take a look at the steps to come up with a great Cosplay design. How do you decide what you want to be, and what’s your process for creating a character? I usually have a long list of things I want to do with one or two things at the top, so I just go for them next. I also sometimes decide based on groups my friends are doing. Most of what makes me want to do a character is if I like their outfit, and if I think it’ll be fun to make. I’ve never created an original character, I’ve just designed a few original outfits, and most of them just end up being what I can make out of what materials I’ve got on hand! I’ve never made a design, drawn it out, and followed it perfectly, I just go with whatever looks good when I’m putting it together.

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What’s been your most difficult component, part, or material to work with?

work on bits of each other’s cosplays together, and I have once forced people staying at my house for a con into helping me finish a costume in time! Other than that, it’s all my own stuff. My boyfriend Probably materials like chiffon and organza, wouldn’t dream of even coming in my cosplay hemming them properly is so difficult. room, let alone helping me with cosplay! What is in your cosplay survival kit? (what do you take with you just incase everything falls apart?)

What went through your head before you stepped out onto the WCM stage floor for the first time?

Safety pins, super glue, hot glue, needle & thread, all kinds of tape.

Something along the lines of ‘right, don’t screw this up…’ It was the first time I’d actually practised the whole skit all the way through. In fact, it was Do you work alone or do others the first time I’d practised half of it not just in my head. I’d spent ages practising one half, and didn’t contribute to your work? have much time to think about the other half. So The vast majority is alone, I occasionally get that was interesting. together with some cosplay friends and we all On a more serious note, harassment and general bad behaviour. Have you had to deal with it while in cosplay? I get very little of it in cosplay, to be honest. Not while at cons at least, I have had some from the public when not at a con, in that case I’d mostly ignore them. If it were at a con I’d say something about it, but in my experience everyone at cons have always been very polite. Where do you go from here? Have you got any new projects you are working on? I’ve got a few ideas in mind, I want to make some new steampunk cosplays next, after that I’m considering an Alolan Ninetales gijinka with a friend doing normal Ninetales, but I change my mind all the time, so who knows! Follow Demora Fairy Cosplay At: https://www.facebook.com/DemoraFairyCosplay/ http://demorafairy.deviantart.com/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/demorafairy/

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Czech Republic

Taking Game Development To New Heights By: Benjamin “Foghladha” Foley

Over the years a few games have snuck their way onto the market from the Czech Republic. Some players never even realize where they came from. Many may not know this, but Video Games are considered one of the biggest cultural exports for the Czech Republic.

any form of visual feedback and were merely an experiment not meant for distribution. By the 90’s the markets changed and many opportunities for programmers became available. This influx of game developers would lay the foundation for the Czech Republic gaming boom.

to learn game development in the Czech Republic and even fewer opportunities to create games. But in 2013 the Ministry of Industry and Trade sought ways to kickstart the struggling economy and changed their support for the video games industry.

Game development in the Czech Republic has a very long history dating back to a 1970’s experiment with SM 52/11 computers. These titles lacked

Before 2013 the video game industry did not enjoy the best of reputation and was widely unsupported nationally. There were very few opportunities

Since then Czech video game studios have been popping up at an alarming rate and their products are some of the best games to hit the market. Today

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there are more than 50 active game development studios in the Czech Republic. Among some of the more recently notable studios we have 2K Czech, Bohemia Interactive, Craneballs Studio, Dreadlocks, Grip Games, and Warhorse Studios. Aspiring game developers have a rare opportunity to live in a beautiful country with a long history while doing the thing they love. After all, there are hundreds of castles and other historical sites in the Czech Republic alone, and hundreds more just a short train ride away. Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not to love about that?

Anyone looking to break into the Czech Republic game development scene should be sure to connect with one of the many Czech Republic Game Development organizations and conferences including Game Developers Session (http://www. gdsession.com/), The Czech and Slovak Republic Video Game Industry Association (http://www. herniasociace.cz/), or the budding IGDA Czech (https://www.linkedin.com/groups/3853441/ profile). Hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a look at several Czech developed games that have either been released or are being released in the near future.

Classics

Series

Hidden & Dangerous Euro Truck Simulator Original War Vietcong DayZ

ARMA Mafia UFO Dead Effect Operation Flashpoint

Upcoming Kingdom Come: Deliverance The Solus Project Planet Nomads Ghost Theory Dungeons of Aledorn

Popular Czech Republic Game Studios Feature

Developers

Kingdom Come: Deliverance

The Solus Project

Planet Nomads

2K Czech

http://www.2kczech.com/

About Fun

http://www.about-fun.com/home

Amanita Design

http://amanita-design.net/

BadFly Interactive

http://badflyinteractive.com/

Bohemia Interactive

https://www.bistudio.com/

Centauri Production

http://www.centauriproduction.com/

Cinemax

http://www.cinemax.cz/

Craneballs Studio

http://www.craneballs.com/

Dreadlocks Ltd

http://en.dreadlocks.cz/

Fiolasoft Studio

https://www.fiolasoft.com/cs/

Grip Games

http://www.grip-digital.com/

Icarus Games

http://www.icarusgames.com/

Keen Software House

http://www.keenswh.com/

Madfinger Games

https://www.madfingergames.com/

Rake in Grass

http://www.rakeingrass.com/

SCS Software

http://www.scssoft.com/

Warhorse Studios

http://www.warhorsestudios.cz/

Publishers Ghost Theory

Dungeons of Aledorn 90

1C Publishing EU

http://www.1cpublishing.eu/

Cenega Czech

http://www.cenega.cz/

Electronic Arts CZ

http://www.ea.com/cz

Microsoft ฤ eskรก Republika

https://www.microsoft.com/cs-cz

Sony Czech

http://www.sony.cz/

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Twitch Spotlight:

10 Questions with Pianoimproman By: Bill “SwordandKeyboard” Owens

Welcome to ‘’Twitch Spotlight: 10 Questions’’ My guest is Pianoimproman and /mom. https://www. twitch.tv/pianoimproman As of September 6th 2016 pianoimproman has over 193,568 followers and about 2,027,659 views and climbing.

Who can take a sunrise (who can take a sunrise) Sprinkle it with notes (sprinkle it with notes) Cover it with Lyrics and a Improv or two The Pianoimproman Can (the Pianoimproman Can)

Pianoimproman and Pianoimpromom, ah what can I say about two people that so many love. Hard to bring the love and feeling these people bring to life on twitch.tv , the love resonates through the speakers into the homes, living rooms and offices of people that maybe just clicked a link to see what it is all about. Then viewers find themselves in a world that.... I will steal the lyrics from the song the candyman and do my own improv ....

Pianoimproman (Bernie) attended the Juilliard School of Music and received both his Bachelors and Masters degree in performance. He studied formally from the age of 4 and attended the Juilliard Prep division at age 10. He attended the High School of Music and Art. Pianoimpromom (Mindy) studied at Hunter college and received her Bachelor’s of science degree in nursing with a Minor in Psychology.

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Channel Description

Twitch Schedule:

The Pianoimproman Stream is an interactive venue between the viewers, Pianoimproman, Pianoimpromom, our pups, Mods & as we call everyone our Twitch Family. One of the unique talents that Pianoimproman has is his ability to compose on the spot, “Improvise” in any style of music. He only needs to listen to a song for a few seconds and can then perform the piece and embellish on it in his own magical way. He plays ALL styles of music in any genre requested. He is also a professional singer and composer.

Pianoimproman (Bernie) will be playing @ 1:00 pm - 5:00 PM EST on Monday thru Thursday. Friday will be 6:00 pm - 10:00 pm EST.

Our Moderators and viewers are very actively involved in the stream throughout the chat. This involvement is not only music related, but we have developed very close and personal ties and relationships with so many of our new friends. Pianoimproman accepts requests throughout the stream which are improvisational covers and many times he creates an original piece of music. Mindy interacts and chats with the stream continuously. She directs the contents and order of the songs that Pianoimproman performs.

Every Wednesday Pianoimproman & Mindy have an episode called “Twitchin’ In The Kitchen”. Pianoimproman plays background music for her cooking show. Their first “Twitchin’ In The Kitchen cookbook will be available in September 2016. How they found Twitch : Their 22 year old son, Max told them about the Twitch.tv in July of 2015. They both loved the idea of performing, interacting and again working together on this new venue. Pianoimproman became partnered with Twitch in October of 2015, only 3 months later. As a child, Involved with acting or sports? Bernie - I have been playing piano since age 3. He is now 71 years young. Performed professionally in the New York Metropolitan area for over 50 years. Pianoimproman did not excel in any sport as a 93

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child, but occasionally enjoyed playing tennis, handball and badminton. Mindy has enjoyed swimming, biking and basketball. They were not involved in acting, but their oldest son Josh is. Any hobbies outside of music? Both Pianoimproman & Mindy share many of the same hobbies such as love of animals, nature, swimming, cooking, going to the beach and collecting shells, shopping, movies, comedy, concerts and the theater. Most of all, they love just being with one another. If you could pick anything you have not done in life what would it be? Bernie: I would have loved to invent amazing, exciting and helpful medical inventions. Mindy: I would have gone to Law School. Was learning how to set everything up for your stream difficult? and how has that come along? Our son Max set up the entire stream for us. Over time, Pianoimproman and Mindy have become more computer savvy and literate. When any technical issues come about, their number one moderator, VBJangles is at their rescue. They have received extensive assistance from their additional moderators, such as Upset Droid and Motorvor. Our oldest son Josh assists us with vines, YouTube, Instagram and other means of Social Media. Max moved to San Francisco 2 months ago, but is always available to help, he is only a text or phone call away.

My personal favorite charity is WhyHunger.org, Do you incorporate any charity into your online/offline presence? We will be having a Charity event in the upcoming month, sponsoring the American Diabetes Association. Mindy is a professional Registered nurse and the two of them have worked together before this stream came about, providing Music Enhancement, performance and musical activities for Seniors with Alzheimerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Disease & Dementia. How do you feel about your channels viewers? Our channel viewers are not just members of our streaming audience, but many have actually become very close friends and an extension of our family.

Did you have professional training? college or broadcast school?

Bernie: Living, Loving, Giving and everything else. Mindy: Sharing it with the love of her life Pianoimproman, her children and pups.

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Bernie: I attended the Juilliard School of Music New York City, New York and received both his Bachelors and Masters degree in performance. He studied formally from the age of 4 and attended the Juilliard Prep division at age 10. He attended the High School of Music and Art.

What do you love about life?

If you were a tree what kind of tree would you be?

Mindy: I studied at Hunter college and received We both share the same tree answer. We would be her Bachelorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s of science degree in nursing with a an Orange Tree, soaking up the sun and spreading Minor in Psychology. sweetness and sunshine to all.

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The Anti-Social Epidemic MMOs Make Unconscious Move Punish Casual Gamers By: Benjamin “Foghladha” Foley There is an unseen plague developing in the MMO industry today. One that is being pitched as a feature, yet is making a very big shift in player mentality. This shift turns old allies into enemies, friends into forgotten. If left unchecked this trend will prevent the new generation from experiencing games the way their parents did. Many major MMO titles are now limiting guilds and clans to under 100 players, some as low as 20. While their messaging will speak of creating fairness in guilds, balancing content, and preventing mega-zerg guilds from existing, the truth is that the real people who will suffer, are the grown adults who grew up paying a monthly subscription to play back when communities were embraced, not punished.

Working with Less Playtime As a father, a manager of a small team of programmers, and as a guild leader, time is something I once possessed. It is a currency that any working adult is constantly lacking. For those of us who used to play Dark Age of Camelot, Ultima Online, Everquest, or Runescape, we can no longer spend 8+ hours a day playing games. Instead, we are left with bite sized playtimes that have to be scheduled around our day to day life. This is a demographic that is at risk of disappearing from modern MMO’s. The casual gamer has an increasingly difficult time finding a guild that will offer them one of their precious few spots. It simply isn’t feasible to have 1 of the 100 spots in the roster filled by someone that doesn’t play every day.

The Math

In 2016 the Electronic Software Association reported in their annual “Sales, Demographic, and Usage Data” report[1] that the industry average player actually spends just “6.5 hours per week” with a majority of players being over the age of 35.

As a baseline example we will base our numbers off the poll of Gaiscioch players which is generous compared to the industry averages noted by the ESA and SuperData.

Another industry metrics giant SuperData reports that the average MMO player is 33 years of age and plays less than 10 hours per week.[2] From our internal research about playtime within the Gaiscioch Community’s player base, we found that the average age of our members was 41 years age and the majority of our membership were working parents that typically spent less than 12 hours a week playing video games. [3] This places the majority of the gamers available on the market, as working parents with tight schedules and life responsibilities.

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The Data

For the purposes of our example we will take a standard 100 person guild from Black Desert Online. Definitions ● Highly Active Gamer = 8hr per day, 56 hours per week ● Casual Gamer = 2hr per day avg, 14 hours per week If 50% of the 100 guild members were spread evenly between each type of gamer you would end up with: ● 2,800 Hours played by Highly Active Gamers. ● 700 Hours played by Casual Gamers ● 3,500 of 16,800 Total Possible Hours (20% Coverage)

Feature

Guild Wars 2

With a community that only played during the hours of 3PM to 11PM you’d have roughly 50 players that would be regularly on during those hours and another 50 that would be on for 2 hour periods within those hours leaving about 13 casual players on at any time during that period. So your regular roster would look like 63 people average online during your guilds playtime. Good, right?

the hard core group rushed to the top that would make 10 of those people level 50+, while the casuals would be spread across all of the levels. So 10 different buckets of eligibility, those other 50 players will have a total of 10 people in the 100 person guild that are their level. Now spread that across 24 hours, and guess what? You’re alone with nobody to play with.

But what happens when your community grows beyond the single timezone? Let’s take a look at a global community that plays across all 24 hours of the day instead of 8. With a 20% coverage, you would be left with an average of 20 people online at any given time.

It’s easy for game developers to assume that a 100% guild all plays at the same time, but from a diverse communities perspective that includes over 500 active players spanning 67 nations. A game that has a 100 player cap simply doesn’t allow players to be casual and still enjoy the experience. Most

20 People isn’t that bad right? But what happens when the game, for example Black Desert, makes it so you can’t play with people more than 5 levels either way of you and there’s a total of 50 levels. If 98

guilds in Black Desert require an activity level to keep membership. Most casual gamers can’t find guilds to be a part of because they’re considered wasted seats in a roster.

RIFT

Feature

This in turn prevents, the casual many, the ones who paid to play MMO’s in the days of old, the ones who have money to spend on games, the ones who remember the community spirit that many guilds shared, from being able to share that feeling again. Guilds like Gaiscioch who have a 75% casual playerbase, who were built from players that were outcasted from other guilds for not playing enough, are in serious danger of either sacrificing everything they stand for, or fading into the history books as “that guild that you were once apart of, that took you in even though you couldn’t play every day.” This is a serious threat to the social nature of MMO’s, and if left unchecked will ensure that the psychological standpoint of our younger generation is to cut out those who can’t commit 8 hours a day to play. Forcing my generation to say

farewell to MMO’s and leave the fond memories in the history books. We play MMO’s to play with others. When your game starts preventing people from playing with others, it can no longer call itself a MMO.

Surviving the Epidemic Will Gaiscioch survive this epidemic? Nobody knows. But one thing is for certain, unless games start making a change, the casual gamer will be extinct. Left with a feeling of being unwanted, unaccepted, and isolated, they will be left with no choice to look elsewhere for kinship. In my personal opinion, this is why games like Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft and Ultima Online are still online today. Community is a powerful thing and with the 99

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right people, a community makes a game playing experience and a lasting memory. Today’s MMOs have a flashfire audience. Look at Aion, ArcheAge, Black Desert, Skyforge, and Age of Conan. All of which released with small guild sizes, all of which lost the majority of their players in the first few months. The longevity of players is directly correlated with their ability to enjoy the game and find a place within the world. By making your games anti-social, you cripple its potential to succeed. For a guild to succeed it needs a healthy player base for players to join others for adventures. When creating a guild size limit, please take into consideration that your player population will be divided into: ● ● ● ●

Playstyles (Population / Activity Types) Region (Population / Playtimes) Lifestyle (Population / Activity) In Game Progression (Population / Level Tiers) ● Archetypes (Population / Group Composition Requirements) A diverse audience will take a full 100 person guild and turn it into a handful of people with nobody

100

their level to play with. All game companies should try to create an environment where all players feel they belong, and all players are welcome. This would in turn support the longevity and health of the game.

The Takeaway Over the past 4 years we’ve seen a major movement to shrink guild sizes. Let’s take a brief look at a few of the games limited guilds to less than 100 players at launch. ● Blade & Soul limits guilds to 50 ● ● ● ● ●

Black Desert limits to 100 ArcheAge limits to 80 Age of Conan limits to 100 Devilian limits to 95 Aion at launch only supported 90 characters ● Skyforge begins with a 30 person limit and requires a huge amount grinding to raise that up to 250 What do all these games have in common? They all experienced massive reduction in player base shortly after launch. Could it be that players would rather not play a game that doesn’t allow casual players to belong? Now let’s compare that to titles

that don’t limit guilds to less than 100 players: ● ● ● ● ●

EVE limits 12,600 Accounts Everquest 1 & 2 do not limit RIFT does not limit Ultima Online does not limit World of Warcraft limits to 1000 characters ● Guild Wars 2 limits 500 Accounts All of these titles have crossed the 5 year mark, some even the decade mark. All of them are still profitable and active. If you provide an environment the majority of players can feel welcome and needed, it will create a better environment for your game. Take some time to analyse your data on how players are using your game. Look at the demographics of your player base and watch the average playtime of your player. If your demographic is under 35 years of age, you are missing out on the majority of the players available. Statistics and demographics are essential to your success and understanding the player base is absolutely imperative to the longevity of your title. I ask every game developer to please, think about the single mom that wants to throw herself into a game for an hour or two after the kids go to bed. Shouldn’t she have a place to feel welcome and needed? These are the Heroes we need in games.

References 1. ESA: Sales, Demographic, and Usage Data http://essentialfacts.theesa.com/Essential-Facts-2016.pdf

2. SuperData: The MMO & MOBA Games Market Report, 2016 https://www.superdataresearch.com/market-data/mmo-market/

3. Gaiscioch Community Metrics

Guild Size Restriction Index Release Game

Max Guild Size

2016

Blade & Soul

2016

Tree of Savior

2016

Devilian

2013 ArcheAge

100

2016

Black Desert

100

2008

Age of Conan

100

TBA

Albion Online

100

TBA

Bless Online

150

2011

Allods Online

150

2013 Neverwinter

150

2003

Lineage 2

220

2016

Riders of Icarus

250

2015 Skyforge

250

2011 Tera

300

2001 Runescape

500

2014

Elder Scrolls Online

500

2012

Guild Wars 2

500

2006

Warhammer Online

500

2011

Star Wars the Old Republic

500

2003

Star Wars Galaxies

500

2014 Wildstar

500

2013

Final Fantasy XIV

512

2006

Dungeons & Dragons Online

1000

2007

Lord Of The Rings Online

1000

2004

World of Warcraft

1000

2010

Mortal Online

5000

2003

EVE Online

12600

2011 RIFT

Unlimited

1999 Everquest

Unlimited

2004

Everquest 2

Unlimited

1997

Ultima Online

Unlimited

http://www.gaiscioch.com/about/demographics.html

101

102

Contents Guild Wars 2 Living World Season 3

104

Yulanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Handbook for Fractals of the Mists

108

When Mushrooms Go Bad

116

Siamoth Slaw

120

103

Preview

Guild Wars 2 Living World Season 3 By Ed ‘Screenager’ Orr

Are stormy times ahead for Tyria? Guild Wars 2 has been suspiciously quiet of late. Mordremoth is dead and activity in the Maguma Jungle has dissipated. New content has been largely contained to raids while the rest of the world has fallen silent. Only a few bandits dare disturb the peace while rumours of the White Mantle slip out of the Aerodrome. That is all due to change with the launch of Living World Season Three. Unlike the core game, Living World season three exists as part of a clearly defined timeline. The newest episode jumps straight back into this narrative, beginning shortly after the close of the HoT expansion. It immediately begins dealing with the consequences of Mordremoth’s death and returns players to Hoelbrak on a rather sombre mission. Eir Stegalkin, part of the iconic Destiny’s Edge guild, did not return from the Maguma Jungle. She fell in defence of her friends and ArenaNet has chosen a fitting tribute to this Tyrian legend. 104

Admirers and comrades can be found gathered around the fire as snow falls on a very Norn memorial. Music plays, flowers are placed, and NPCs recount the exploits of Eir. While Eir’s memorial is not the centrepiece of this episode, the small number of available activities convey a love for this character that is quite obvious. What begins as a sedate celebration actually turns out to be a real treat for lore fans with more than enough content for repeated visits. When you return to the Living World do fill your flagon to the brim, because this wake is overflowing with mirth and song. Rata Novus calls, however, and our heroes cannot rest for long. The abandoned ruins of Rata Novus are the focus of a frantic investigation by the Asura due to some disturbing discoveries. This trip back into the catacombs below the Maguma Jungle returns Taimi and Cannach to season three. Taimi’s appearance is one of my personal highlights of this episode. Some absolutely stellar writing and razor sharp wit make her a joy to see. Using Rytlock

Preview

and even the Commander as her comic foil, Taimi gives this episode a little lightness without descending into the outright farcical. Really, this entire segment is used to deliver players to the climax of the latest Living World update, and an entirely new map.

scattered across the horizon. A twisted magic seems to run through this map that tortures the living and dead alike.

ArenaNet has done a fantastic job visualising this eerie magic. Leylines of blue and gold permeate the landscape, while crystalline storms hang in the Players are pulled into this new area following a sky like chandeliers refracting these colours. The catastrophic magical incident. Glimpsed at the sky feels unnaturally oppressive in deepest red end of a recent trailer, this explosion has wreaked as glowing embers slowly float upwards, hinting havoc with the landscape. Chaotic clouds float at a land below that burns in the gloom. Some ominously over a sky shrouded in unnatural red incredible audio work complements these visuals. and gold hues. A fortress looms over the land, As you dive into the anarchy in the sky, storms suspended by an unknown force, and rubble is crackle with energy, thunder rumbles ahead, and

105

Preview the crushing sounds of destruction assault you

it even affects these masteries. Gliding has several

while navigating the map. ArenaNet has crafted a map that is uniquely beautiful and ominous at once.

new enhancements, including a leyline infused speed boost which launches players across the sky, while aerial combat is even possible in Bloodstone Fen.

Bloodstone Fen is a fantastic mix of old and new Tyria. Players who have already ventured into the Maguma Jungle will instantly recognise the layout of this map. Consisting of three layers, the map topology closely resembles the three tier structure established in HoT. Gliding and mushroom masteries prove extremely useful when trying to navigate the upper reaches of the Bloodstone Fen. The mapâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s abundance of magic is so overwhelming

106

Below the unnatural skyline, the map continues to stretch down into the depths of the Bloodstone Maw, where the story continues. An ancient force has emerged and some more investigation leads to a series of events that face off against an interesting variety of new veterans. They are not quite as horrific as the Mordrem, but every bit as engaging. At higher altitudes, the floating fortâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ghoulish

Episode one has clearly started to pull Guild Wars

raid narrative can be found littered across the map. Notes from a mysterious journal, enormous glowing runes carved into the landscape, and even the adversaries facing players hint at answers to the White Mantle’s resurgence. Living world has always produced some of the most interesting content in Guild Wars 2, from Scarlet’s war to Canach’s redemption. While I have my concerns that Living World may be shackled to the linear narrative to kill a dragon, the team at ArenaNet have already thrown in a few wild cards. Season three of the Living World looks to be shaping up nicely and if you own Guild Wars 2, you can jump in now and experience the new Living World for

2 in a new direction. References to the recent

free.

Preview

warriors may rise up repeatedly, but the most interesting abominations wander the lower levels. The White mantle can be found, as dangerous as always, and the Jade Construct is a fiendishly engaging challenge. The events that spawn around these levels bear a definite resemblance to event chains found all across core Tyria. ArenaNet has clearly acknowledged the criticisms of HoT. Core story and major event chains are no longer locked behind unwieldy meta chains or masteries. Every Tyrian can compete in Bloodstone Fen, with a varying degree of difficulty.

107

Guide

Yulan’s Handbook for Fractals of the Mists By: Yulan Cardoso

A brief introduction

undergoing some heavy changes and a lot of things contained here are subject to change, but don’t you worry! My intention is to keep this handbook updated as these changes go live. You can also contact me in-game (Yulan.4069) if you have any questions, suggestions for this guide, or just want some company through the mists!

Back in October 2015, ArenaNet announced that it would officially stop the development of Dungeons in order to focus their efforts on Fractals of the Mists, popularly referred to as FOTM, as the new standard for PvE 5-man instanced content. This year we will see the first release of new content for this mode since the Fractured update How does FOTM work? on November 26th 2013, and as an enthusiastic veteran player I decided to write this first chapter You can access Mystlock Observatory - the first of the handbook focused on potential orphan area of FOTM and popularly known as “fractal’s hub” - through a portal in Lion’s Arch at any dungeoneers FOTM newcomers. character level, but while inside you will also have Mike O’Brien, ArenaNet’s co-founder and recently an account-wide Personal Fractal Level. nominated Guild Wars 2’s Game Director, also announced that some of FOTM’s systems are

108

From here, you can access multiple “Islands” with

Guide

increasing difficulty within FOTM, suited for a group of 5 players, and every time your group completes any Island equal or higher than your Personal Fractal Level, it will increase

Tip: The group can access any Island based on the highest Personal Fractal Level of its members (if the player with the highest level is on 78, that means Islands 1-78 are

by 1:

available for the whole group). This way, your group can play the content at their own pace and reap the rewards of Daily Fractal Achievements without individually meeting the requirements for it.

• Your level is 1, and your group complete Island 1 = You’re now level 2; • Your level is 2, and your group complete Island 50 = You’re now level 3; • Your level is 3, and your group complete Island 1 = Your level remain 3. While in the Mistlock Observatory, you can change the current Island by interacting with the Scale Setting Sequencer, repair armors and access some merchants. After the group has packed up, they can travel to the Island by stepping into the portal at the middle of the Observatory. Note that you can check the current Island selected and your Personal Fractal Level in the top right of your screen while inside FOTM.

Agony (Island 20+) From Island 20 onwards, a new mechanic called Agony is introduced: it’s an irremovable Condition applied by certain events and boss attacks that reduces your healing capacity and rapidly takes away a % of your total HP per second applied. Higher Islands inflict heavier Agony that can potentially kill your immediately, and the only way to counter it is by increasing your Agony Resistance (AR) attribute.

109

Guide AR is increased by applying Infusions acquired see and fight the mursaat. To defend against the in FOTM or from the Trading Post to pieces of Spectral Agony used by these foes, players could Ascended or higher quality gear (the only ones infuse their armor. Do you see a connection here? with Infusion Slots available), thus making them required after a certain threshold. You can check the recommended amount of AR for the current Island in the top right of your screen while inside FOTM, and your character’s AR in the Hero Panel along its other attributes.

Mistlock Instabilities (Island 31+)

These are special modifiers introduced at Island 31 that apply various effects in the group, like “When you dodge roll, you lose all your boons”, keeping the game experience fresh and challenging. Every few sets of islands have their own Mistlock To know how much AR you need for a specific Instability, and starting at Island 61, there are two Island, check Appendix 1: Agony Resistance Mistlock Instabilities active. Table. Every few sets of islands have their own Mistlock For tips on how to increase your Agony Resistance, Instability, and starting at Island 61, there are two check Appendix 2: Increasing your Agony Mistlock Instabilities active at once. Resistance. Trivia: In the lore of the original Guild Wars, players had to go through the rite of Ascension in order to gain the Gift of True Sight, which allowed them to

110

You can check which Instability is currently active in the same area where Boons and Conditions are shown in the UI. Always keep them in mind, since some are pretty game-changing!

Island Level 31-40

Mistlock Instability

Tip Try to replace your dodges with blocks, aegis, and skills

endurance regeneration.

with built-in evades. Applying Blind is really great here. Protection also helps mitigating the damage you’ll have to soak.

41-50

51-60

61-70

No Pain, No Gain: Enemies

Boon striping and corruption are your best friends here.

receive Protection, Might and

Try to remove Protection from enemies as much as

Stability when you hit them.

possible, or steal it for yourselves!

Last Laugh: Enemies

A well-timed block/evade will do the trick most of times,

explode when killed.

but if all else fails, keep a ranged weapon in hand.

Sluggish: The recharge time

Conditions are applied too constantly here to cleanse

of skills you use is increased if

in any reliable way, so save it for particularly nasty

you have a condition on you.

conditions like Poison. Necros can benefit from

Afflicted: Enemies apply

transferring conditions as well. Take your time to get

random damaging conditions.

used to the new timing of your skills, or hire a Chrono for

Guide

Lethargic: Reduced

all that sweet Alacrity. 71-80

Afflicted: Enemies apply

Nothing new here, keep going!

random damaging conditions. Lethargic: Reduced endurance regeneration. 81-90

Lethargic: Reduced

Be careful from now on, as you’ll want to keep your

endurance regeneration.

enemies free from any Retaliation and Protection. The

Boon Thieves: Enemies

safest way to do this is to avoid applying them at all –

steal boons when they hit you.

This is the reason Guardians are so avoided in high-level Islands nowadays. Change your traits accordingly and avoid blasting Light fields!

91-100

Boon Thieves: Enemies

There isn’t much to be done about Social Awkwardness

steal boons when they hit you.

besides reaching 150 AR, but even then the healing

Social Awkwardness:

reduction from the constant Agony ticks will still affect

Nearby allies receive Agony

you greatly. If possible, move away from your allies and

while you are fighting

wait the Agony to end before using your big heal skills.

opponents.

Tip: If you feel the need, you can “skip” particularly nasty instabilities by playing Islands above their threshold until you reach the desired Personal Fractal Level.

111

Guide

Appendix 0: Glossary

112

• AR: Agony Resistance • FOTM: Fractals of the Mists • PFL: Personal Fractal Level, usually only called “level” when referring to FOTM. • PvE: Player versus Environment, where players challenge artificial intelligence enemies instead of other players

Up to this point I hopefully covered every fundamental mechanic you need to know to start your FOTM adventures. What lies ahead are specific guides for some of the most frequent issues and challenges people encounter in this game mode, which are going to be nurtured over time.

Appendix 1: Agony Resistance Table “How much AR do I need to survive each Island?”

↓ AR

20-29

30-39

40-49

50-59

60-69

70-79

80-89

90-99

100

10%

31%

53%

74%

95%

117%

138%

159%

180%

25%

47%

68%

89%

111%

132%

153%

174%

19%

41%

62%

83%

105%

126%

147%

168%

13%

35%

56%

77%

99%

120%

141%

162%

29%

50%

71%

93%

114%

135%

156%

23%

44%

65%

87%

108%

129%

150%

17%

38%

59%

81%

102%

123%

144%

11%

32%

53%

75%

96%

117%

138%

26%

47%

69%

90%

111%

132%

20%

41%

63%

84%

105%

126%

14%

35%

57%

78%

99%

120%

29%

51%

72%

93%

114%

23%

45%

66%

87%

108%

17%

39%

60%

81%

102%

11%

33%

54%

75%

96%

27%

48%

69%

90%

21%

42%

63%

84%

15%

36%

57%

78%

30%

51%

72%

24%

45%

66%

100

18%

39%

60%

105

12%

33%

54%

110

27%

48%

115

21%

42%

120

15%

36%

125

30%

130

24%

135

18%

140

12%

145

150

Guide

HP lost per agony tick (increases 2.1% every island)

113

Guide

Appendix 2: Increasing your Agony Resistance Ascended trinkets (Accessories and Rings) can be used by any Profession and are overall easier to acquire than Armor or Weapons, so I usually recommend to start with these. The most costeffective method to acquire Ascended trinkets, excluding random drops, is: Rings: Buy them from BUY-2046 PFR at Mystlock Observatory for 10 Pristine Fractal Relics each (acquired by completing FOTM daily achievements). You can also be rewarded with a random ring at the end of any Island. Accessories: Buy them from a Guild Commendation Trader for 5 gold + 12 Guild Commendations each (reward for doing Guild Missions).

The next step is usually working towards infusing your ascended armor, and later weapons. This order is important because the Infusion in your weapon only contributes to your total AR when it’s in your hands, which means you’ll lose it if you swap to a weapon set without Infusions. There is a plethora of ways to achieve this endgame goal, but I recommend aiming for something like that: • +9 Infusion from each armor piece = 54 AR • +7 on each Weapon (x2 for 2-handed weapons) = 14 AR • +7 from each Accessory = 14 AR • +7 /+9/+9 from each Attuned Infused Ring = 50 AR • +9/+9 from your Backpiece = 18 AR

Total = 54+14+14+50+18 = 150 AR, the Start applying +7 Agony Infusions (bought from exact amount you need for Island 100. BUY-2046 PFR at Mystlock Observatory for 64 +1 Agony Infusions, that you acquire as rewards Tip: Heart of Thorns owners can acquire for completing any Island) to any Ascended gear the Anguished Tear of Alba potions for cheap you acquire. Once your rings are upgraded (see after training the Follows Advice mastery Appendix 3) this will provide you up to 56 AR under Fractal Attunement. These will grant from trinkets alone, that can be transferred to any you a flat +10 (+15 if you have the Fractal character since Ascended items are all accountAttunement Mastery) AR for 1 hour, being bound. Nice! ideal for beginners who still lack the gear needed or to push those last few, expensive AR required for higher level Islands. 114

Guide

Appendix 3: Upgrading your Items Tip: Whenever you upgrade your items through the Mystic Forge, any Infusion applied will be lost. Use an Infusion Extraction Device (bought from INFUZ-5959 in the Mystilock Observatory) to save your precious Infusions before doing that! All Ascended Rings come with a single Infusion Slot, but they can receive extra slots after being Attuned and Infused for a total of 3 slots on each Ring: To infuse a ring you will need to combine it in the Mystic Forge with: • 1 Shard of Crystallized Mists Essence • 3 Globs of Coagulated Mists Essence • 5 Vials of Condensed Mists Essence

To attune a ring you will need to combine it in the Mystic Forge with: • 1 Agonized Essence • 1 Philosopher’s Stone • 1 +1 Agony Infusion Ascended Backpieces can also be infused (but not Attuned) for a total of 2 Infusion Slots, but each backpiece may use its own formula for that. To be sure, look for your specific backpiece in the Official Wiki’s article on Ascended Backpieces.

115

Fiction

When Mushrooms Go Bad By Althea “Briseadh” Damgaard Tinte Rois had grown up in the jungles of Maguuma though she had spent a lot of time in Rata Sum and the influence of the Asura could be seen for miles. What could go wrong deeper in the jungle when plants got a mind of their own? Sylvari were plants after all. Okay, they were

would think it smelled good. Only a necromantic plant could. If you even think of succumbing to Mordremoth I will have no issues raining fire down on you, twig.”

weird and many times made no sense at all, but one could manage to deal with that. You just remembered, never try to re-compute any of it.

grows more abundantly. Let’s find something to snip.”

She trekked into the Verdant Brink far enough to realize Mordremoth had twisted the plants enough to make great vines reach into the sky and take out an armada of airships. Not a good thing, but now it appeared rather stagnant. The uprooted land with the massive vines went onward, unchanging. She had to check out the aftermath, but did not wind up alone. “Ah, this place smells quite delightful.” Marfach took in a deep breath as if trying to suck in the very energy of the place. Tinte frowned. Something noxious permeated the air. “You

116

Marfach laughed. “No, this place needs a good pruning so life

Tinte refrained from face palming as the purple Sylvari danced off into some denser foliage. A squeal made her run after her friend. She watched Marfach spin into the air laughing. She felt dizzy watching the flight of the Sylvari until she landed safely on a ledge above.

breath and made a daring jump onto it. The sudden spinning into the air caught her off guard despite having seen her friend doing the same mere moments earlier. She landed next to Marfach glad the spinning did not make her sick. Some semblance of a path led further into the jungle from the cliff’s edge into a cleared area. “Oh, my! that mushroom is moving.” Marfach pointed as it charged towards them.

Tinte’s head swam with the mushroom’s hit and despite seeing stars she was sure Marfach had been thrown well behind her. In front of her was a “Come on up here. The view mushroom about the size of the is quite spectacular.” Marfach one she had jumped on, but this waved. “Just bounce on that one had an attitude. mushroom there.” She pointed to a rather innocent looking She fired off a spell, slamming yellow mushroom at the base of a spike of molten material into the cliff she now stood upon. the mushroom as it stomped again. The impact made them Tinte walked over and examined both reel as fiery stone exploded it. Nothing seemed out of the everywhere. She flipped ordinary. It did not smell, though backwards and threw a few it looked like it shifted air to rise quick fire spells at it. It charged above its head. She sucked in her through them.

Fiction

It slumped at her feet. Tinte sighed with relief. Then she heard cloth tearing behind her.

She ran over to the tree Marfach hung in with tears running down her cheeks. She wiped her eyes as she looked up realizing she “A little help here please.” had no way of reaching even the lowest branch. A quick survey of Tinte turned to see Marfach the area showed no way to climb hanging awkwardly in a tree and glide into the tree. Not even mostly by remnants of her a bouncy mushroom to put her dress. Despite what caused this higher and come back down. trauma, the Asura fell into a fit She could see all sorts of stuff of laughter. in the sky above. This place was definitely a mess. She had one “Oh, do get ahold of yourself and option. help a friend out.” Marfach’s dress ripped further as she She pulled off her pack and tried to twist and reach up for a started rummaging through it. branch. “It’s a good thing I know Soon rope and a grappling hook how to sew.” lay on the ground next to it. Tinte regained her composure “You hit me with that and I’ll only to start coughing as the smell make sure my pets do more than of the burnt mushroom hit her. sneak up and tickle you.”

“It’s this or I burn the tree down. I could chop it, but that would take too long. Besides it does not seem to be of good quality wood.” Marfach simply sighed and dangled. “Get on with it before another one of those… Look out!” She pointed across the clearing. Tinte spun. She called up her fire elemental. It intercepted the charging mushroom at the same time Marfach’s deadly bug did. The bug got stomped first giving the elemental and Tinte free shots at it. Another cooked mushroom slumped on the ground. Tinte screamed as something 117

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thudded to the ground behind her. She spun ready to blast whatever it was to find Marfach grinning at her. “Saved.” Tinte rolled her eyes as she watched Marfach manage an agile leap to her feet despite her fall. A good deal of preening by the Sylvari achieved an acceptable look. The effect was something only a plant could pull off, with a tattered dress and disarrayed leafy hair. “Let’s see what other kind of mushrooms we can find. We already know what most of Mordremoth’s regular army looks like, but this should be quite intriguing to you. Something new to analyze.” Tinte decided not to argue with that logic. She did want to figure out what made these mushrooms tick. So far they had found one that helped them bounce higher into the jumbled landscape and one that tried to stomp them into the ground. She did not want to speculate what other types would be found.

looked rather docile compared to the stomper. For one it was quite smaller and had quite the spiky head. “Uh, oh. Duck!”

Marfach shifted into her deadly form and flew left. Even with the warning, Tinte saw the spikes After several fights with roaming coming too late. She screamed minions of Mordremoth they even as she brought fiery rock found another clearing with down. The magmatic slag moving mushrooms. These 118

crashed onto its head, and was followed up with fire all around it on the ground. She still got spiked again before its charred body fell to the ground. “Nice job frying it.” “No thanks to you.” Tinte scowled as she cast a healing spell. “I did manage to warn you and you did kill it before I could flank attack it.”

Tinte pulled a spike out of her jacket’s tail. “Good thing you can sew.”

Marfach returned to her Sylvari form and poked at the dead mushroom with her staff. “Mushroom three, the spiked horror. Dodge when it bows its head.” “Yes, I get that point now.” Tinte huffed as she turned away. Several steps later she found herself slammed into the

“Oh no you don’t little bomber shroom.” Marfach cackled as she summoned both her pets. Tinte watched as deadly magic and the crazy pets of a necromancer took out the mushroom. She tried to note how it did its attack on one of the pets, but the headache from the surprise attack made that

Tinte sighed with both relief and frustration as Marfach helped her. “I’m done for the day.” “You do look a little green from that attack. Now that we really know these mushrooms, we can be better prepared for our next adventure.”

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“Holes are the worst to fix.”

ground, the world spinning. She fought to recover.

Marfach sounded far too chipper about it. Tinte so wanted to punch her friend, but pretended she was okay. Her head still

impossible.

swam from the explosion.

“Here we go.”

“I’ll take your silence as a yes to further adventures. But let’s get some drinks first, if you don’t think it will spill out the holes in you.” Tinte managed a weak laugh. “You can mop it up with your rags.” Marfach laughed with her. “Fair enough!”

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Siamoth Slaw By David (Gpa Fog) & Esther (Gma Fog) Foley A Cook, a Chef, and a Snow Leopard walked into a pub. The grizzled human barkeep, crumpled on the bar like a well-used dish rag, opened one eye, grunted, and closed it again. “So what’s for lunch?” Cookie asked, way too cheerfully for the bartender, or for that matter the decor of the rather dingy pub. They were the only patrons at the moment. There may have been a reason. A wrinkled arm uncurled from the heap of bartender resting on the bar, his eyes still closed, and a finger pointed at an aged and dust covered sign.

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Daily Special:

Slow Meat 25c

The sign was so old the paint had mostly peeled off. All that is, except the price, which had been painted over sometime in the last decade or so. Apparently this had been the Daily Special for many, many days. “So what is Slow Meat?” asked Cookie, still sounding cheerful and obviously not taking the hint from the bartender. The bartender groaned, then forced himself off the bar to a more or less upright position.

“And just what is the Slow Meat of the Day today?” Cookie asked. “Got me a Siamoth this morning. Wifey done cooked up a batch of Siamoth Slaw.” It was Misty’s turn to ask questions. “Isn’t Slaw

“We’ll have two of those.” piped Cookie cheerfully, clearly oblivious to the dynamics of the conversation, the room, and implied quality of the meal. “With Hunter’s Ale.” He was hungry. The barkeep raised one eyebrow, as if to ask if Cookie was kidding, then shrugged and bellowed “Two Specials” loud enough to cause the glasses on the shelf behind the bar to rattle. Somewhere below the bar there was a rattling of glass, and eventually a pair of tankards of ale appeared. Then he muttered “siddown” and returned to his “pile of rags on the bar” position and appeared to go to sleep.

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“Me an’ Betty B. Buckshot there - “ he angled his head toward an ancient blunderbuss hanging over the back door “- we go out every morning first thing. Whatever don’t get itself hid or gone is slow meat. Could be most anything. The little lady always makes it taste just fine, though.”

usually a vegetable salad?” Misty looked back, obviously not pleased with The old geezer looked at her for a moment and Cookie speaking on her behalf. Cookie missed the replied “The veggies were too fast.” His tone look, like everything else this morning, but Misty implied that Misty might be significantly slower finally shrugged and turned back into the bar. than the vegetables. Cookie snagged the ale as they found a table in a corner facing the door and sat on the worn chairs The Snow Leopard responded to the barkeep’s at the sturdy but well-used table. There were tone with a look that seemed to ask the question of initials carved in the tabletop that had to be from just how fast the barkeep himself might prove to several generations of the entire local population, be. Misty’s hand grasped a handful of neck fur as along with a few symbols and words not generally she intuitively read the big cat’s intent. “Steady”, found in polite company. she whispered, and turned toward the door.

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“Homey kind of place, don’t you think?” asked Cookie while looking around at the memorabilia of forgotten hunts, battles, and events of lost importance nailed to walls and collected on shelves around the room. “No, not really.” was Misty’s reply as she looked at the accumulated dust, worn floors, and aged furnishings. The big cat crouched at her feet surveying the room, expecting a rat or some other plaything to appear at any moment. Dust motes danced in the light of a window that may have once been transparent. Or not. The room suddenly brightened as the door to the kitchen swung open and a brightly clothed lady with a glowing face and smile entered the room. She looked like everybody’s grandmother, round and warm and friendly with an apron covering a dress patterned in bright flowers, grey hair tightly up without a stray strand, carrying two generous platters of steaming food. “Well hello there! I don’t think I’ve seen you before. Are you new to town?” Just the way she said it made you feel like a kid again.

Eating utensils appeared from the folds of the apron, and “grandma” stepped back as if to appraise her masterpiece. She spied the big cat on the floor, grinned and said “I’ll be back in just a moment” and whisked back to the kitchen with a wink at the cat, who suddenly became quite alert with anticipation. A moment later she was back with two large bowls, one with scraps of meat and fish, the other with milk, which she placed on a towel on the floor in front of the table, then backed off a step and clucked her tongue at the cat. Foggy looked at the bowls, then up at Misty with a look of pleading that would melt any mother’s heart. Misty smiled and nodded, which was all the approval the cat needed. A loud purr and sloppy sounds filled the room as the bowls began to rapidly empty. “I’m Edna, but most folks around here just call me ‘Granny’ ” said the glowing Granny as she slid into the seat next to Cookie, “and that over there is Edward. I don’t suppose he introduced himself. Folks around here just call him ‘Grumpy’.” A “Hrumpf” came from the direction of the bar.

“Just passing through.” said Cookie as he instinctively sat straighter in his seat and moved his elbows off the table, his earlobes remembering the lessons of his youth. “Exploring, mostly.” said Misty, who suddenly felt a need to join in the conversation. Foggy Mist, the Snow Leopard, just sniffed at the plates with interest. “Well then welcome to you all, make yourselves comfortable, and eat up!” came the reply as the plates slid into place in front of the two travellers. 122

Granny ignored it and went on, “So tell me about yourselves and your adventures. Where are you from? I don’t get many chances to get out and explore any more.” Misty explained briefly that they were looking for new recipes and foods for the Queen, and had been on the road for a while now. Cookie, meanwhile, was trying hard not to be rude but drooling slightly as he examined the pile of steaming, sweet and spicy meat on a sliced roll placed in front of him, accompanied by a pile of

“Oops! I forgot! Just a second!” Said Granny as she scooted from the table to the bar, returning with what looked like a couple of large towels. They had a couple of dangling strings, and Granny deftly shook them out and tied the strings around Misty and Cookie’s necks, leaving an apron-like expanse of tough fabric that extended to their knees. “It can get a little messy, but it’s worth it.” Misty tried to use a fork and knife on one of the thin orange wafers. It wasn’t cooperating, as Granny smiled, pointed at it, and said simply, “Fingers, Dear”. Misty looked doubtfully at the wafer, then shrugged and picked it up to nibble daintily on the edge. It was surprisingly complex, crispy and chewy at the same time, salty and savory and sweet. She looked at Granny and raised an eyebrow as she munched. “I call them ‘Chips’, spiced and baked slices of Sweet Potato.” said Granny.

Misty’s Snow Leopard, was now enthusiastically doing duty ensuring that nothing soiled the floor. The snapping jaws in close proximity to Cookies, uhm, legs, encouraged him to keep the bulk of the overflow on his plate. Chips alternated with mouthfuls of tender spicy meat and bread washed down with swigs of ale as his once mighty pile of food was rapidly reduced to a wasteland of wellpolished plate and a few smears of sauce across face and hands.

Fiction

thin crispy wafers that sparkled with crystals of salt and spice. His mind and attention was fully engaged in strategizing an attack on the plate without it resulting in a massive mess.

Foggy looked disappointed as he polished off the last of his plateful. Misty just couldn’t bring herself to pick up the shredded meat and bread, and instead attacked it with knife and fork. The first forkful of the savory meat caused her eyes to widen, and she studied the next forkful as she chewed. “There is something in here besides Siamoth..” she stated, her Chef senses now on high alert as she mentally disassembled the complex flavors bursting on her palette.

“Grumpy Edward over there doesn’t like vegetables, so I have to sneak them in on him. “Humumm..” replied Misty as her pile of “chips” I call them ‘Skelk Veggies’ after the way those began to disappear. Skelks sneak up on you. One second they are there and the next they are gone. That ‘Siamoth Slaw’ is Meanwhile Cookie, giving up on any semblance about a quarter vegetables. It stretches the meat, of a strategy for neatness and falling back to his gets Edward to eat a few veggies, and adds a bit Charr table manners, ignored the utensils and of flavor and texture.” Granny explained. “We simply picked up the messy bread and meat pile have a whole group in the Grandma’s Information and stuffed a good part of it into his mouth. Network hereabouts that shares ‘Skelk Veggie’ recipes to keep our little Carnivores in check.” It was good. Really good. It had a sweet yet spicy taste and a certain chewy texture that appealed to “Grandma’s Information Network?” Misty asked, his animal side. The bread did its best to contain somewhat curiously. the saucy shreds of goodness, but there just wasn’t any way to keep a bit from escaping. Occasionally “DId you ever wonder how your Mom and Grandma some rolled down the covering to where Foggy Mist, knew what you were up to, sometimes even before 123

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you did? That’s the Grandma’s Information Network. The fastest form of communication in the universe.” Granny’s smile widened as she winked at Misty. “Oh, Really?” Misty’s mind went to her second, and more important mission of gathering intelligence. “Can I ask you a few questions?”

the huge Snow Leopard and third tankard of ale close at hand. Both were purring contentedly. No one seemed inclined to intrude on their personal space.

Within the first hour of chatting with Granny, Misty knew more about what was happening in Queensdale than the local Garrison Commander. By the end of the evening she was quite sure that The discussion went well into the evening, with the entire Order of Whispers had scant information pauses as Granny returned to the kitchen as compared to the Grandma’s Information Network. new customers drifted in. Cookie had moved It would take weeks to complete her dispatches to away from the table and was sitting on the floor Queen Jennah. reclining against Foggy Mist, his head resting on

Recipe

Siamoth Slaw

Sweet Potato Chips

Ingredients:

• 3 lbs Siamoth (or pork) Roast - or alternate Slow Meat roast. • 2 tablespoons Seasoning Rub of choice • ½ a bottle of your favorite BBQ Sauce • 4 cups grated or julienne root veggies - we used carrots • 1 large onion, sliced

Prep: 1. Rub seasoning on roast and let sit overnight in Fridge. 2. Next morning add onions then the roast into the crock pot. 3. Pour your favorite BBQ Sauce over the roast. 4. Cook on low for about 5 hours or until you are able to shred the meat with two forks. 5. Add veggies to the pot with the juices and return the meat to the pot on top of the veggies. 6. Cook another hour in the crockpot on high. 7. Mix it all up and it’s ready to enjoy on your favorite bun.

• 2 large Sweet Potatoes • 2 tablespoon olive oil • ½ teaspoon sea salt and/or favorite seasonings (Try Paprika and Brown Sugar, Pumpkin Pie Spice, or Cajun mix)

Prep: 1. Pre-heat oven at 275 degrees. 2. Peel and Slice the sweet potatoes evenly thin (about 1/8” thick or less). 3. Place them in cold water for 5 minutes. 4. Pat dry and place them in a plastic bag with the oil, sea salt, and spices. 5. Seal the bag and shake them up until they are all coated. 6. Place a cooling rack (oven safe) inside a cookie sheet. 7. Set the sweet potato slices on the rack next to each other but not overlapping. 8. Place the sheet in the center of the oven for about 2 hours. They should stay until crispy brown. They taste great with that Siamoth Slaw sandwich above! 125

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Contents A New Age of RIFT

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first look at Starfall Prophecies

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A New Age For Telara By: Benjamin “Foghladha” Foley

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This year has been a very big year for Trion Worlds. They launched Devilian in North America, revealed their new title Atlas Reactor, and are well on their way to bringing Trove to consoles. But Trion Worlds isn’t done yet! They also have an expansion for ArcheAge and RIFT rapidly approaching.

Now I’m a sucker for siege warfare. Whether it’s PvP or PvE there’s nothing better than pushing an enemy fortress and waiting for those doors to fall to unleash hell on your enemy. If done right you’ll have adrenaline pumping through your veins and you’ll be begging for more.

When news of the RIFT Expansion landed on my desk, I was eager to see what they were doing next. I skimmed the feature list and stopped on one line in particular that widened my eyes and raised my curiosity. It was two simple words that turned my curiosity into anticipation and those two words were “Fortress Sieges”.

Alas, the more I searched for information on these mystical fortress sieges the less information I found. So It was time to call in some favors. I wrote my friend Scott Hartsman and begged him to let me interview one of his devs about this mystical expansion on it’s way to RIFT. In true Scott fashion, “A dev” turned into “The Dev” as in the development director himself Simon Ffinch! It

Feature is with great pleasure that we share our findings of the work on Artifacts that are a huge collectible with you in this short interview with the legendary game within RIFT. I work on a bunch of other bits Dead Simon. and bobs too such as mounts, dimension items, achievements etc.

Thank you so much for speaking with us. Would you mind telling us a little about yourself and what you do at Trion Worlds?

A lot has happened in RIFT since it launched. We’ve seen the birth of instant adventures, crafting rifts, massive world bosses, and one of the most social friendly games on the market today. Comparing RIFT to other MMO’s you see a very social centric vibe. Everything in RIFT pulls people together creating a very social experience. Was this a core design philosophy or did it happen completely by accident?

My name is Simon Ffinch but I am known as Dead Simon to the RIFT community. I am the Development Director on RIFT. This means that all the designers report to me and I oversee a lot of the other day to day stuff required to make sure the design vision get executed on. This is my official job, the one Trion hired and pays me for. But one of the most awesome things about Trion is that they let me do a lot of actual content creation too. I have been making games for over 30 years This was something we set out to do from the and I think if I was not allowed to actually make beginning. In fact the underlying technology of stuff in the game I would probably go crazy. I’m our servers was built with this in mind. We wanted the one who makes all the puzzles and does a lot 129

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to make it as easy for people to play together as possible and we have continued to iterate on this over the more than five and a half years RIFT has been live. Many of the systems we developed and put in ourselves, but some of them have been suggestions by our player base. We have always looked at it as a collaboration with our players and we continue to be very actively involved with them on a daily basis. Being able to easily group up with either close friends or complete strangers and have fun has always been something RIFT has excelled at.

Building on the success of RIFT, moving forward you’ve announced your next expansion, Starfall Prophecy. What can we expect from the social titan moving into this next expansion? What new features will we have to play with? As mentioned above getting people to play together has always been a key goal for us. The future is

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no exception we are working on more ways to make it easy for people to group up and enjoy more parts of the game together, for example the upcoming looking for raid feature. Of course we need a new Raid for people to try this out on so that is coming too. I am also working on a puzzle chronicle. For those of you that are not familiar with Chronicles these are built to be completed by 2 players together. So this will be the first time that a traditionally solo feature will encourage a more social aspect.

Among the feature list, I caught the term “Fortress Sieges”. Can you tell us a little about these sieges and what will be involved with them? In a nutshell Fortress Sieges combine several of our other systems into a sort of land control game. There is content for various group sizes from solo to 10 man Raids. In general the deeper you penetrate the harder things get, and the more friends you should bring along.

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With 5 new zones being added with this dlc, how large are these zones?

Are there any new titan sized world bosses lurking around these zones?

Well the smallest of them is about the size of Droughtlands, so pretty darn big. They are absolutely jaw dropping gorgeous with surprises around every corner. With the themes of Life and Fire being a big part of the new expansion there are a couple of zones each that features these elements. The contrast between these themes is really cool and each is beautiful in its own way. There is a spot right in the middle near the tower that is a particular favorite of mine, where you can look one way and see an awe inspiring hellscape with volcanoes and rivers of lava complete with lava falls. Then you look the other way and there is an inviting naturescape with lakes, rivers and waterfalls with weird and wonderful foliage all around. It is really pretty amazing I think it is safe to say that the art team has really knocked it out of the park this time.

We have messed around with various methods of doing world bosses over the years and most of them have had some issues of server performance when we get huge numbers of people all letting off VFX at the same time, in the same place. This time we are experimenting with putting these bosses into instances. So rather than just tripping over one of these guys in the open world, you will do things that then unlock an instance for you for a time where you will get to fight large bosses. This also is tied into our fortress siege feature.

Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s talk about the Tower of Anhket for a moment. Looking at the map it appears this is dead center in the middle of the 5 zones. What type of encounter will this be? Solo, Group, Raid, Adventure, 131

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that introduce new players to the benefits of being in a guild and allow them to explore what it means to belong to a guild right from the get go. There are tools that will then help them either start a new guild of their own or look for another guild that I don’t want to give too much away here. But fits their playstyle. Additional guild improvements basically the players will discover that the tower and features are in the works, and will be added itself is sentient. We are in fact introducing a new following the launch of Starfall Prophecy. ‘Big Bad’ that is going to feature heavily in the entire Starfall Prophecy content cycle. There is Can you explain a little about already a Raid that is live that introduces players how Active Upgrades work? Is to some of these ideas and the upcoming DLC will it simply the more you use it the continue that story. However it is planned to go stronger it gets, or is it a bit more well into the future as well.

or World Boss? Are you able to give a little light on what we can expect and the center of this comet?

in depth than that?

What new opportunities will be available for guilds in Starfall Prophecy? Any new features, trophies, or content designed for guilds specifically? We actually just added a bunch of stuff with respect to guilds. For example we now have starter guilds

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The system is actually very flexible and we can do a lot of neat things. You can think of it as upgrades for quests. Although these are not actual quests that you would see in the quest log, the system does allow us to set things up with the same flexibility. So sure we can make an item upgrade if you kill a billion Kobolds but we can also do things

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like having an upgrade trigger for completing a dungeon in a specific way or collecting a certain quantity of a specific item. The possibilities are endless.

Will there be any kind of improvements coming to the base game with Starfall Prophecy for those that do not buy into the DLC?

will continue to do so in the future. We havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t finalized everything with the new expansion yet and we are looking into some possibilities for people that donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t purchase it to at least get a taste of whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in store if they do.

Is there an eta for when we can expect to see Starfall Prophecy go live?

Starfall Prophecy will be going live in fall of this We are always improving the world or Telara. year. Technology improvements such as the recently released multi-core support or the upcoming 64Learn more at: bit client, are certainly things that everyone will www.starfallprophecy.com benefit from. We continue to release new content and systems that are not part of the expansion and 133

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First Look at Starfall Prophecies Gaiscioch talks to Christopher Junior about RIFT’s rising star By: Ed “Screenager” Orr It is almost four years since Rift’s first major expansion, Storm Legion launched. Now, Trion are gearing up to launch their latest update to Rift, Starfall Prophecies. Due to go live in Fall 2016, this expansion finds players facing such insurmountable odds that only the might of a united Telara can possibly overcome them.

The Scatherran Forest, for example, are torn from the life plane and clearly reference the ethereal Fey race as inspiration. High fantasy dominates with a natural palette, soft focus, and gorgeous greenery that surrounds some of the game’s newest additions.

Players eager to pet a bear will expect to pay for A huge comet approaches Telara, delivering the privilege. Rift’s free to play strategy during the the wrath of an ancient enemy. To stop this launch of Nightmare Tide was far from successful monstrosity, players will need to band together with several items falling behind paywalls. Trion and venture into the planes of life and fire, as they is taking a more transparent approach to Starfall traverse this giant hunk of space rock. The five Prophecies. Paywalls have been demolished, level new zones in Starfall Prophecies look fantastic. caps have been raised, content has been made far 134

more accessible and is available, including bears and unicorns, for a single box fee.

So that’s a great question. Players will find that they start in a small city and they will notice a whole bunch of Telarin mages there. They basically went

At Launch it is exclusively PvE content. We will still have buckets of new warfronts for level 70 players, but we are planning to do some Warfronts and Conquest stuff next year. The way we do it is, we release an expansion and it’s not all available at start. We like to roll it out over a year and a half, and within a year and a half we will have new PvP modes introduced.

there before the players did and set up a colony, allowing players to transfer from Telara to the comet. It’s as you’re accustomed to, but just a little bit more powerful.

How will new armour and weapons affect those who choose to PvP?

With new foes being based on a comet, how do the ascended land on a giant hunk of space rock?

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I sat down with Christopher Junior, Game Director at Rift, to talk a little bit about the new expansion and more.

The Guardians and Defiants have been unified to fight this force. Is there any PvP mode expected to make an appearance or is Starfall an exclusively PvE update?

What we are doing is taking the level 60-65 bucket we have right now and stretching it up to 70. Then we do bolstering to normalize everyone’s stats.

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Feature Players can get new gear but they will not be at a complete advantage. The only difference will be that they do not have access to legendary abilities.

For those of us that departed after storm legion and now find themselves drawn back by Starfall Prophecies, what would you say is the most outstanding improvement between the first expansion and now? Also can a returning player expect to see it right away?

The game runs, ridiculously better frames per second wise, it’s nuts!

That’s a huge change for a game that’s been around for a while? Does that mean you are building for the future? We’ve been around five years in April. We are definitely investing in the future but at the same time we’ve been live for five years. We now have that grace period where we can step back and see what have we done, what did we have to compromise on, and address some tech stuff we’ve got to clean up. It’s really nice to have those opportunities.

The best thing since then would have to be multi core support, which we released about three months Will there be planar invasions in ago. It’s fully live right now. It’s free for everyone. the new zones or will they have The game supports multiple cores now. When 4.0 entirely different threats? comes out we are actually going to be upgrading to There will be planar invasions and we will still 64-bit clients. So the best improvement would be have Rifts. Since the comet has flown through the multi core support and the upcoming 64-bit client. 136

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planes, it has pulled pieces of everything into it. We are actually adding a new type of adventure called planar assault rifts. For anyone that already does our instant adventures, it’s very similar. Basically, you join a queue, it finds a whole bunch of people, it slaps you together, and it throws you into the plane. So you can grab five of your friends, jump in and fight a rift in the plain of fire or rift in the plain of death. It’s a sort of instances combat that you can jump in and out of whenever you want. We are also adding zone events called fortress sieges where players will eventually bound together. They start as single player or small duo groups, go to the content, kill all the bad things, knock down a wall, and go to another area that’s now group content. They continue on, knock down that wall, and it now becomes raid content. You can grab your (nine) friends (or a public group), jump into an instance and fight the boss at the end.

So this is giving players a taste of raid areas? It is very much, yeah. One of the big things for Rift is that we want to make sure everyone has access to everything, all the time. Raids always sort of fall behind with that. It’s maybe one or two percent of our hardcore audience plays raids and it’s great to give everyone else a chance to play them. As a result, last year we introduced raids in instant adventures. So what used to be our outdoor, friendly, casual, we now throw them into raids. So we released Hammerknell and Mind of Madness as fully pugged, twenty player, fun raids where they get to experience the story and everything else. It’s great to see that Rift, as a game, understands that the rest of the community outside Raiders exists. While the top percent of players are great to aspire to, they don’t pay the bills at the end of the day. 137

Feature Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get me wrong, we love our raiders. They are hardcore and probably some of the most passionate voices of the community. We love to give them content. We focused so long on giving them these amazing, deep raids that the biggest problem we had was that we had these amazing storylines in our expansions but they would always end in a raid. As a result, some of the players never got to experience them. Now we finally have the time to step back, open them up and get everyone in there. On top of that, we are actually releasing Looking for Raid with the expansion. People will be able to queue up and find a raid group.

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Are there any massive world bosses to overcome that require fifty, or more, people? So we wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have anything that is on the scale of VOLEN like in Storm Legion. We do have some smaller world bosses and we still have the standard world events that we always have, where the entire zone is taken over. Volan was great, unfortunately Volan was extremely expensive to make and having two hundred players turn up in the same place to fight one boss, we might have had a few issues with that.

Rift is pretty much two things at any one time. We have one of the most expansive, open character class systems and the other half, open world dynamic content. So we are always going to have big open events like that.

Are there any new features specific to guilds? So we just released a new feature called starter guilds. Everyone who joins the game now, who’s never had a character will instantly be grouped into a starter guild. We have one on the Defiant’s

side and one on the Guardian’s side, so you are instantly in a guild and you will have like-minded players to play with. You can leave at any time and join your own guild. Aside from this, we are looking at adding new guild levels for the expansion and yes, there is new stuff coming for guilds but we aren’t quite ready to start talking about it yet.

Feature

This time it was a case of stepping back, seeing what we could actually handle and it’s what we are actually taking in the fortress content. Everybody will be fighting together at the final point and then they’re going to jump into an instance of their own. This lets us deliver a better overall experience as it’s easier to predict how many players are going to turn up.

So how do starter guilds work from a structural point of view? At the base level they are essentially a shell of the existing guild system. You don’t have all the perks, you don’t have leaders, there are no ranks. Everyone has the same rank when they join and you can leave at will. We went ahead and made these guilds level five and gave them all the perks they get at level five. They get the benefit of guilds but without the drama of maintaining the guild, having a bank, stuff like that. It is a guaranteed

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Feature social circle where you will know there are friendly high level players joining, to help you out, or people who are just as new as you are.

Do you need to incentivise these high level players to join Starter Guilds? We actually haven’t. It’s something we talked about in the past but we just had incredibly helpful players who just enjoy helping each other. I know a player that will jump into a Starter Guild once a week and give out twenty bags.

So are starter guild something that were built to fit the existing community ethos or did the community take to them naturally once they were in the game?

where I’m supposed to play ‘. Rift is very open and has many options, and it made sense to give these players a place to group together and work it out. It’s been pretty amazing so far. We were worried about things like spammers but, it just hasn’t happened. All the things you might worry about aren’t occurring.

Is it fair to say starter guilds are a fairly low reach solution to a solution that might have otherwise required massive investment in new player experiences, tutorials, and UI redesign to cure?

Yeah very possibly. Once you have a game like Rift, it’s really hard to answer all those questions, for new players. We’ve got guys that have been on the We very much built Starter Guilds towards the team for ten years and it gets to a point where we community. Nobody had said ‘ Hey, we want a don’t always know what new players are missing. Starter Guild ’, but the complaints we heard were By the time player communicate it to us it’s too ‘ I don’t know what to do early on ’, ‘ I don’t know late. Anything we can do to get them to talk to each how I’m supposed to play ’, and ‘ I don’t know other is a win for both sides. 140

Wow, I’ve been in the industry for eleven years now. I was actually in IT well before. I spent about a decade in that. I played Everquest, loved it as my first online game, got into a really strong guild with some really opinionated people. It ended up that I was guilded with somebody who worked at Sony, at that time, didn’t realize it and after being really active in the community was asked to apply as Everquest 2 was coming out. Interviews for Game companies are insane. I had an eight hour interview with twelve to thirteen different people, two group panels. A week later I got a call back, packed up everything, moved to California, and it’s been eleven years since.

What piece of tech has you excited? For me personally, it’s VR.

It’s VR for everyone this year. So which headset do you like best? The Vive, it’s incredibly fun.

Did you step off the ledge?

Feature

Now onto a few non Rift questions. How did you get started in the industry?

No, no I couldn’t. Atlas Reactor actually did a really cool thing where you can play the game in VR and see all the NPCs in life size, scares the heck out of you! There are a couple of zombie games I played, a rhythm game, and stuff like Elite Dangerous looks amazing in VR. It’s the future! As for the future of Rift, it is looking bright with an incredible heritage, it is one of the few MMORPG that has survived in a fiercely competitive market space, for so long. While Trion’s first love might not be drawing in Legion’s numbers, they are listening to their players and there isn’t a single garrison in sight. If you plan to return to for Starfall Prophecies, you can find out more at: http://www.starfallprophecy.com/en/

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Guide

How-To Get Cooking in the Black Desert By Althea “Briseadh” Damgaard It doesn’t take long to figure out you need cooking or money for the marketplace to buy what you need from other players. Most people have workers doing something and the workers want their beer! Not everyone wants to spend the time cooking, but for those that do, here is how I did it.

potato harvesting so I could make it myself. Any grain will do, but at this point in the game the main grain of choice was the potato. I never considered them as a grain, but they work in cooking just like wheat, barley, etc.

Beer is easy to make, but goes beyond simple cooking. I needed a cooking utensil to make it. I Getting Started in Velia then needed a residence to put the cooking utensil When I reached the second ‘city’ of my travels, Velia, into. Are you starting to feel the complexity of this I learned a lot of things about housing, workers game yet? This was day two of my adventure. and some of the life skills in the game. If you are not sure about housing and node management So now that I have my house and a worker filling you can check out my Node Management article up a storage space with potatoes, where do I find released in Issue 9 of Gaiscioch Magazine. my cooking utensil? Go to the inn and talk to Chef David Finto. He will not only have a starter One of the things I acquired was a free ‘naive cooking utensil, but you will visit him a lot for the worker’ to do something with. I also got told my basic ingredients for cooking that you can only worker would need to be fed with beer. Obviously buy. Every city has someone that supplies these at least one worker was going to have to do some 142

up to making and using my own advanced cooking stations, but the icon in the list will look the same as it does in your inventory.

place mode via the button at the top of the screen. I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remember if there was a quest in Velia to teach you the basics of this or not. You will see a list of a lot of things along the bottom that could be added to the home that can be purchased with Pearls. The cooking utensil should show up as the first item you can place as new to the home. It may come after a bunch of items with red check marks, which are items already in the home. I am

the motion. It is usable in any position, but you may want your place to look cool too!

Left click the cooking utensil icon on the list and you should see a shadowed out version of it in You do not have to do any quests to start cooking, your house. You can use the directional controls to just get the utensil and figure out the recipes. The move it and spin it around how you want, like any fastest place to find an easy recipe guide is at http:// item you place in your home. I pulled mine out for www.blackdesertfoundry.com/2015/05/03/all- a screenshot and when I tried to put it back, my recipes/ where Tansie has been doing a wonderful character was standing too close and it told me I job keeping lists of cooking and alchemy recipes. could not place it on top of her. Also, make sure it is not next to a wall if you want to spin it for Take your new utensil to your house and enter aesthetic orientation, as the walls physically stop

Guide

ingredients for cooking. Also, quests may point you to the chef for the cooking utensil. Shelley, who is doing the dishes behind him will start giving you cooking quests as you progress through Velia life quest chains and level your cooking.

What do I need to make beer? 5 potatoes, 6 mineral water, 1 sugar and 2 leavening agents combined in your utensil will do a one-time cooking of beer. As you level you will start getting more than one or two beers. At upper end of skilled, I can get up to four beers with one combination of the ingredients

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get cooking experience, contribution points, milk, beer, and money. If you right click on the side dishes you will see an option called ‘NPC Location’ that will give you a path to the person wanting that side dish.

Leveling Your Cooking

and have some good chances at getting Cool Draft Beer, which restores a point more to the worker consuming it than regular beer. It will also take one energy point for every time you cook. The nice thing with the cooking utensil is that multiple recipe completions can be set up. Say I want to continuously cook beer 100 times. I would need 100 energy on the character plus: 500 potatoes, 600 mineral waters, 100 sugar, and 200 leavening agent. I would put in the amount of materials it takes to cook it once and then click the continuous production button. Say yes to continue if you are sure you have the right number of items in the cooking utensil. A keypad will pop up and you can click the maximum button near the bottom and it should tell you that you can make 100 if you have the amounts I listed above in your inventory. Your character will continue to cook until done, they run out of energy, or the utensil durability runs out. It takes a lot of cooking to wear out the utensil, even for the starter one. If you are new to the game, your energy will be the biggest restriction on how much you can do at once. You will also acquire five different side dishes while cooking, so keep inventory room open for these as they appear. These can be turned in mostly in Heidel although one is out at Aljendro Farm, to 144

Cooking for your workers will help level your skill easily in the beginning. However, there are some good food and drinks for buffs to help you with both your fighting and your gathering. I like the gathering food because it can add speed and experience boosts to the gathering process. The variety of fighting food is plentiful, with buffs that will help the various classes. If you have pets, guess what, they want food too. If you truly want to master your cooking you should do the quests you find on your journeys. The quest givers in Velia will send you off to Heidel when you are ready. The other way to find quests for life skills is via the Black Spirit’s guide. He will be rude about it, but he will tell you who to see. All quests from him give the wonderful guided path to follow. I guess he doesn’t want you getting lost trying to find the person. Completing quests will lead to acquiring things that help with your cooking. Certain cooking skill milestones will give you achievements to claim. When I reached Professional level I got a cooking outfit that added 10% experience to my cooking if I was wearing it at the time I cooked or handed in my cooking quests. Many of the quests will give you cooking ingredients for which I usually take the milk. I can do the milking game pretty good, but I know people that have issues and if you have lag it can be terrible to play this mini-game. I use a lot of milk making

Farming Why do I need this for cooking? Some of the ingredients are only acquirable through farming. You can hope someone puts some on the market to fill a preorder, but a lot of times onions go rather fast. You need them as part of the oatmeal recipe. Pepper is another good item to be growing for cooking. If you are into making some of the

When I first started I acquired the tool shop in Velia and made it a level 2. I could at least make an intermediate cooking utensil. If you want to make advanced cooking utensils, the next closest location to do so is Glish, south of Heidel. A level 3 tool shop can be acquired there.

Guide

oatmeal since it feeds my workers faster and it is also used in the better organic pet food. Changing to oatmeal when you can rather than sticking to beer will also level you faster.

Conclusion Cooking is a great thing to do in the game to feed your workers, pets and yourself. It does take some coordinating, but is well worth your time. You will benefit when you go into battle and via the money you save on worker and pet feeding.

good teas they have, one of which comes with an experience bonus, you could farm flowers. I usually just go to the Northern Wheat Plantation near Calpheon and gather as I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have a huge farming production. You learn about farming at the Northern Guard Camp just before you reach Heidel from Velia. This will give you a plot that will allow you to do one plant that fits in one space. From there you will need contribution points to rent more plots. The plots will stay down for a week and will renew as soon as you plant something new in them. The largest plot will allow for up to ten spaces of farming.

Making Cooking Utensils You will need a tool shop to do this. The nice thing with all the workshops is that you can check out the materials you need before hand to make sure you have them in storage. This ensures your worker will actually do something. The game nicely tells you if your workerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s storage does not have the required items. The worker will only work with the storage in his hometown even if he will travel to workshops in other towns for you. 145

Crowdfunding

System Shock Nightdive Studios $1,350,700 USD (150%) In 1994, a company by the name of Looking Glass Technologies would make a daring move to bring first person action role playing in a 3D environment together in a Sci-Fi classic called System Shock. The legendary Doug Church (Ultima Underworld, Thief: The Dark Project, Deus Ex, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive) and Warren Spector (Wing Commander, Thief, Deus Ex,Epic Mickey) helmed the team that would bring this title to life and place it firmly in the history books. Still today System Shock holds a special place in a lot of the 90â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gamers hearts.

original game while keeping the modern gamer interested. Their team is laced with several members of the original System Shock team and also brings industry veterans Chris Avellone (Fallout 2, Wasteland 2, Planescape: Torment) , Jason Fader (Fallout: New Vegas), and Robb Waters (Bioshock, System Shock, Thief).

The System Shock Kickstarter campaign launched on June 28th, 2016 and set out to make $900,000. By the close of Nightdive Studiosâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; campaign, they In 2016, Nightdive Studios decided to take the would raise $1,350,700 from 21,625 backers classic that influenced games like Half Life and putting this title firmly at the top of our Summer Bioshock and bring it back to life in a reboot of 2016 Crowdfunded Champions list. the original. With a modern take on the original System Shock, they have remained faithful to its For more information about System Shock head predecessor. It has implemented many overhauls over to their homepage at: to gameplay content to capture the spirit of the http://www.systemshock.com/ 146

Crowdfunding

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Prey for the Gods No Matter Studios $501,252 USD (167%) This Kickstarter graduate pits players against the Gods that rule their world. It is an action survival game with a very unique art style that reminds me of ICO or the Last Guardian. The game is completely non-linear and allows you to choose who you engage in battle and when. It features dynamic weather, day/night cycles and encourages players to explore the vast frozen frontier.

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Prey for the Gods hit Kickstarter on July 6th 2016 with a goal of $300,000 and managed to raise $501,252. You can look for Prey for the Gods releasing on Playstation 4, XBOX One, and Windows. For more information head over to their homepage at: http://www.preyforthegods.com/

Crowdfunding

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The GD Studio ÂŁ168,315 GBP (153%) The GD Studio has big plans for their new oldschool competitive Arena FPS Diabotical. They are looking to bring back the competitive shooter of the past and bring it to the eSports centerstage. GD Studio has been on the forefront of eSports since 2011 working on products for Twitch, Valve, and Blizzard. Diabotical will feature classic and new innovative game modes for solo and team play. There will be a wealth of customization options for your 150

characters. Diabotical also offers a full multi-user map editor and modding support to allow for endless creativity. The team at GD Studio launched their Kickstarter campaign on July 31st, 2016 with a goal at 111,000 GBP and managed to bring in 168,315 GBP over the course of their 30 day campaign. You can learn more about Diabotical at: http://www.diabotical.com/

Crowdfunding

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Bonus Level Entertainment â&#x201A;Ź107,876 EUR (114%) FOX n FORESTS looks to bring back the nostalgic 16-bit action platformer as our hero, Rick the Fox, shoots, slashes, and snatches their way on a quest to reveal the 5th season. The game plays a lot like Super Ghouls â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;n Ghosts or even Castlevania. You will make use of a magic melee crossbow that can be used for both close quarters combat and ranged combat. It also allows you to switch between 2 seasons per level instantly which will allow you to complete puzzles and locate secret places.

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Bonus Level Entertainment set out on July 14th, 2016 to raise 95,000 EUR and managed to raise 107,876 EUR by the end of their Kickstarter campaign. They received pledges from 1,459 backers and continue to receive contributions through PayPal. It also has been Greenlit on Steam. FOX n FORESTS is planned to release on Window, Linux, Mac, XBOX One, Playstation 4, and Nintendo NX. For more information visit: http://www.foxnforests.com/

Crowdfunding

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Preview

Kingdoms Preview By Robert J. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Jaironeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Mann

Overview:

pick some perks. Perks control what you can do, and how effective you are. If you intend to start Kingdoms is an interesting early access title built your own village you will need scholar, worker, and in Unity. It takes the idea of Mount and Blade, taskmaster. In the current state, NPC migration is and turns it toward a 3d persistent simulator via not implemented so this must be done in the first your viewpoint. The game has big plans, some day, but that should eventually change. Chopper interesting mechanics, and a team which is is very important early for getting lumber to build updating frequently. Right now, the game is in with, but can easily wait for level two. early access, and it needs a lot of work. There is, however, the promise of something interesting You will start off with a yellow bar showing your showing. stamina. When you run or work this bar will go down, requiring short breaks. You can see it in the Starting off: image above. One of the first things you will need When you first load the game, you will generate a to do is learn the controls and set your inventory world with a few parameters. You can set the day/ up. Tab will open a menu screen like this next night cycle timer, and the NPC count. Once you do image shows. so, you select from a few image options, and then

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Preview

There are four icons. In order from the top, they are inventory, quests, character, and crafts. As you complete quests and gather resources you will gain experience and levels which allow you to learn more perks from NPCs. Your first order of business will be to get some food, just start searching the ground. Food is more common in woodlands, so look there! You will see a weight icon when you can loot something.

Settling in: Next up, you need to decide where you want to sleep at night. The NPCs will be building villages, and if you are building your own, they will flock to it. To build your own, simply place a well somewhere outside other villages. Remember, it must be the first day/night, or all the NPCs will have gone to other villages. This is eventually planned to change with NPC migration, but as it currently stands you will have an empty village! If you are not building your own village you can look for one you like on your map. The mousewheel will zoom in and out. All towns show up on the map directly. Farms, caves, and other smaller structures that arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just homes or shops in a town will show as question marks.

Your inventory actually changes based on the perks you selected to start. In my case I made a woodcutter. Thus I start with a good axe. To equip an item simply drag it over. The inventory is currently very basic, but that is early access!

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Once you get close enough to those other structures your map will update with the appropriate icon. You will need various resources from some of those structures, or maybe wish to plant a garden at somebody’s farm. You can of course make your own farm too.

Continuing to grow: As you complete tasks you will gain levels. Each level gives you 10 points to learn new perks. In the case shown above, I picked some perks to go with my woodcutter and put down his own house. I also picked trader so I could build shops and buy/sell items. If you don’t build a shop you must wait for an NPC to do so, which takes longer. They will do so, however.

Your next task will be to put down a home of some sort. If you have the worker perk you can build some houses, advanced perks will unlock more buildings. Simply hit tab, go to the crafting part, and select what you want to place. The building will show up in front of you, moving with you. You must find fairly level ground to place it, if it is blocked by anything it will show red instead of the normal colors. You can sometimes fit a building places it would otherwise not fit by rotating it using ‘q’ or ‘e’.

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The next order of business is to get more wood to finish your home. Unless you have worker your first home will be a camp. If you have worker you can skip straight to a house. To get wood you need a weapon that can chop. Most edged weapons can chop, but axes are the most efficient by far. Weapons go in the left inventory slot. To chop down a tree you need to pull your axe out, which is ‘2’ by default. Then you hold your mouse button when a circle shows while in front of a tree. The circle will slowly fill. Once full, you will get your lumber and the tree will fall.

Building a village: Building a village is a matter of working with the NPCs. You could make one all to yourself too, but you get a big advantage with NPCs. Not only do you need them to learn new perks, they can party with you to fight foes. They also offer you quests! Accepting a quest is as simple as walking over to the village bulletin board. You take a task from the board, complete the objectives, then talk to the person who posted it. Initially this is more difficult as nobody has a home and they run off to do things. Once they have homes, however, you can frequently find them near their house.

When you complete a task the conversation window shows a different screen than normal. Normally you have three areas to discuss, with a variety of options. In this case, you get a single option to complete the quest instead of the full dialog setup. Each completed quest gives experience and gold. Just laying out the homes for a village can easily level you up several times over.

Preview

When you first fell a tree it sticks around. I like that it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just vanish into thin air! The wood is gathered repeatedly from the stump, and the first such gathering removes that big tree graphic. So you get the nice experience of seeing the tree fall and stick around. You also have the ability to clear it up and not have to deal with that big old log though.

You may not see all buildings requested yet. The game is still a work in progress. However, the system is improving and has had many of the identified bugs completely squashed.

Final thoughts: Kingdoms has a ton of potential. It is definitely early access, with all that one could expect of that condition. The game promises to offer an interesting multiplayer experience with a variety of playstyles. It also shows great potential in looking at advancing how we see NPCs in our games. While the current version still has a ton of work to do, it may well be worth checking out. The game offers some things rarely seen. I will be interested in seeing exactly how the finished product looks! Many thanks to the team at Oreol for your work on the title!

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Review

A Ghost of a Tale By Robert J. “Jairone” Mann The game eschews the standard formula of combat. Instead it asks you to play with a mix of smarts, stealth, and swiftness. Where that may not thrill some people, the chance to play such a role will delight others. If you ever wanted to be Bilbo rather than Thorin, this is the sort of game you have been looking for! Actually, you will be a mouse named Tilo, but the idea is similar.

Finding your inner mouse: A Ghost of a Tale is a game brought to us by Lionel “Seith” Gallat. Gallat is a veteran with Dreamworks and Universal Studios, and those skills help make an impressive looking game! Funded via an Indiegogo campaign, A Ghost of a Tale is available on several platforms in Alpha.

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Be very, very quiet:

Review

There are a few auto-save conditions such as conversations which save outside hiding spots. You are a mouse. You are often hunted in a variety Using those and those alone to play the game of situations. You might not be hunting rabbits, would be a painful challenge, maybe for somebody but Elmer Fudd offers you some good advice. The with far more patience and time to try. quieter you are, the less likely you will be noticed. As you roam around you have a variety of choices to make. Those choices include not being so quiet at times. If you want to be quiet, but need to get to where an enemy is standing, you can see about throwing something near them. The noise will inspire them to go looking for whatever made the it. If they see you, however, the distraction was pointless. You have a variety of tricks though. Even if spotted you can run swiftly. Losing your pursuit around a couple corners, or hiding when they cannot see you, will result in them giving up. Additionally you can don a number of disguises. That is, if you can find all the pieces needed.

When hiding you will have a limited view. You can see from the picture that a barrel leaves you with a small circle of light. Each hiding spot has a different setup, resulting in a different view. Learning to deal with these view restrictions is important to any prospective mouse!

What happens if a mouse is seen? What, precisely, do you think happens? Granted, there aren’t any women about to chase you with a shoe. However, there does tend to be those on the lookout for shady characters. Unless you dress to impress the locals, some will probably consider you shady. I already noted that you can find costume pieces in the game. Collecting each full set shows up as a quest. Quests are more or less a means of tracking your progress in A Ghost of a Tale. They don’t always offer tangible rewards. If you want to see what outfits you have discovered there is a nice little book in your inventory. It not only lists some information about each outfit, but offers a quickchange option to equip it! If you are seen you will be chased. If you are chased you can always try to hide or lose the pursuit. What if that’s a problem? In that case, make wise use of tools and the environment!

There is another important aspect to hiding. It is the only time you can save your game manually. 159

Review

Tools offer you a ton of different options for dealing with situations. I mentioned throwing something to make noise earlier. A handy stick or bottle can be used for just that. They might also have other effects in certain situations. You also have other useful tools such as a candleholder that can be used for light or arson. I do suggest not trying arson while standing in a pool of oil in a wooden house. Please don’t burn poor Tilo!

task, and where the story sounds serious you are not on a timer. Additionally you can climb up onto most flat surfaces in true 3D open world style.

That sounds great, but it isn’t quite perfected yet.

A clever mouse with tools is more than a match for almost any sticky situation. If you are injured from having somebody chase you with a nasty weapon you will need to heal. As is custom, just eat a little and you will be fine! Foods can be gathered around the world, but do not respawn. Be careful!

Exploring your surroundings: This game encourages you to explore. There is rarely any pressing need to accomplish a given

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One of my few complaints was how clunky the climbing interface can feel. It is easy to push some of the climbing objects rather than just climb them. Sometimes the location requirements make jumping an exercise in frustration. A few bugs left in the current early version can make this even worse as objects can vanish until the entire game is shut down and restarted. I left feedback and hope for improvement. Maybe even seeing a suggestion I left implemented. It is alpha, these things are to be expected. I didn’t find as many as I expected to be honest.

I also had a lot of fun with climbing. Despite some frustrations most of my experiences were positive. It felt like I was really able to go exploring without getting myself into trouble. The only time I had

Final thoughts: A Ghost of a Tale offers reasons to explore, and fits well into the stealth category without being too punishing for any single failure. As work continues

this title should become a shining example of making a fun casual game which still offers enticing gameplay. I have very much enjoyed my time so far! I heartily recommend A Ghost of a Tale to anyone who is looking for a slightly different game focused on exploration, story, and puzzles!

Review

issues with the world was my own impatience as I ran into an unloaded area. That is a sure recipe in most games to go falling through the world. Which is the case here, as well and I took a merry trip into the skybox!

Learn more by visiting the gameâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s website: http://www.ghostofatale.com/

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Review

Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen By Robert J. ‘Jairone’ Mann

Not all ports are the same: Dragon’s Dogma goes out of it’s way to prove that point. Certainly, we have all seen games ported over as a mess. The control schemes that don’t work well, the graphics which actually seem like a downgrade years later, and so on. You won’t find that here. You’ll find a game which lives up to what it was before. One where Capcom put in not only the time and effort to create a control scheme which works, but which feels like it was made for the game. Beyond that, the graphics team did an excellent job adapting the game to PC. Not only did they create a crisp translation, they improved a few areas beyond what might be expected. Even more importantly, everything works. The game port is a solid example of virtually bug free gaming. As a 162

port during the era of downloadable content and bug fixes I expected a few issues to have slipped by, but I found none.

The initial events of the game are cutscene heavy, and pit you against the titular opponent of the game, the Dragon. In the case of this game, that is a specific name. The Dragon exists, and with it the Arisen. For those having not played, again, I am avoiding spoilers here the best I can! Thus if you see Dragon in capitals, it is because it is a specific name, not just a description.

issues with NPCs being lost, but such issues may exist.

gruesome demise. This is especially true since the only real indicators of advanced creatures, other than bosses, are how they look. Sometimes you will end up fighting a higher level or otherwise dangerous opponent which can leave you in bad shape.

Other additions like a speedrun mode and a hardcore mode offer additional gameplay opportunities. Whether you will like them or not depends largely on your own preferences, but they are nice options to have!

Review

That is not to say the game is perfect. It has flaws, including the use of enemies which vastly outlevel you in the quest flow. That problem can make certain quests feel far too difficult. In turn, that can lead to issues where you go off questing elsewhere, and certain quests can cause others to change. One of the most noted problems is that one of the earlier quests completely destroys an important NPC if not done before a certain other quest. Before you head into the capital city and complete story quests, do make sure to save a girl who is worried about you! Otherwise she will be gone until you start a new game, either from scratch or post completion with bonuses. I didn’t note any other major quest flow

Once you do get done with all the cutscenes, you will start off in town with a new and very personal quest to solve. Set off, but beware. Combat in this game quickly grows in difficulty. If you are not prepared for an area your adventure will end in a

Getting started: You start the game in the past, where a previous Arisen is searching for the Dragon. While I don’t want to go too far into spoilers, this is definitely easy mode with very low danger. After resolving the events of the past to a certain point, in one little dungeon, you will begin again, this time creating your character. The character creator isn’t Pawns: anything too fancy, but it does give a solid set of options to make various styles of characters on a Remember that second character I talked about? level that is on the higher end overall among game They are something called a ‘Pawn.’ Pawns are character creators. some sort of alternate dimension summoned allies. They are simultaneously one of the most Moreover, you actually create two characters. The interesting and most frustrating aspects of the second is your constant companion. I’ll get to that game. I’ll get into more details here, because more later, but after a short time in the game you Pawns will be a huge portion of why you succeed or will be making a second character. 163

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fail. Most importantly, replacing older Pawns will be. This is because hired Pawns do not gain levels. You and your personal Pawn do, but the others stay exactly as they were when hired. Replacing them regularly with others close to your level will keep combat from becoming very difficult.

Pawns also loot items for you. This is another aspect where Pawn personality comes into play. Depending upon the options selected a Pawn may loot more often and quicker. Sometimes it even goes so far as for them to stop fighting and loot during battle. Having Pawns loot at a moderate rate and pick up items after battle is very useful, Each pawn has their own personality. The results and you lose nothing. Having them stop fighting are compiled from choices made during character can make a hard quest turn deadly. If you happen creation for each Pawn. There are a handful of to have made an error with regard to your own Pawns around the game that the designers made, Pawn, you can alter their personality. There are but most of the Pawns you meet will be those made items which help with this. Even better, many by other players. Your own personal Pawn can also things can be altered just by talking with them. join the game of others, potentially coming back with gifts.

Further, each Pawn has other personal aspects to them, such as the knowledge they have obtained about the quests in the game. This can alter what they say when you are attempting to complete a quest. Finding a Pawn that knows the quest you are on can make life much easier, or it can be a matter of not really mattering. It depends on how tricky the quest happens to be. 164

Simply find a good table at a local Pawn guild and sit down with your personal Pawn. They will ask you questions about how they are performing and your selected response will alter their behavior slightly. Enough times sitting and talking, and they can be drastically different from their previous self.

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The final thing you need to know about Pawns is how to find them. You will encounter Pawns left in your local in game area regularly, but they might not be the right level or combat style for you. Instead, you can access a Rift Stone and enter the Rift. The Rift connects to other worlds, including the world of the Pawns. You wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t cross over, though, but rather will recruit those who join you between worlds. There, you can recruit from a number of Pawns. You can also send them away and get more potential recruits to show up. There are three important sources of quests. The first is NPCs. The second are system messages, which occur when you have progressed far enough to have met the unlocking requirements. Note that meeting those requirements in no way means you are ready to face those challenges! The third is quest boards. Quest boards offer a variety of quests, some of which can influence other things in the game. Most notably, there are missions which raise how an individual NPC relates to you. They also offer a multitude of side quests to help you gain levels.

Questing: Quests are your primary source of larger amounts of xp and rewards. Although you can certainly level off combat, quests offer massive rewards. You will get more xp and rewards from combat overall, but quests offer large amounts when completed. As with most newer games, quests are marked on your minimap. People related to quests also have icons over their heads. In the picture above you can see both. In the picture below you will see two colors of marker. The red markers are your focused quest and appear on the minimap. The yellow markers are for all non-focused quests, and appear on NPCs only.

Quests often need items or monster kills that are in an area you have already cleared. There is no need to worry though. Each area will slowly recover, allowing you to loot and pillage the countryside once again!

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and Pawns will help you figure out when you have found a new area to access.

Systems:

Accessing the map, quest journal, options, and several other things are done via the game menu. To use this menu just hit the escape key. Not only can you save on the fly, but you can look up your own in game history. Utilizing the map via this menu is probably one of the least intuitive systems in the game, but it slowly becomes more familiar.

One of the systems you will be frequently using is the Inn. Inns aren’t just a place for resting in Dragon’s Dogma. They do allow you to rest, restoring HP to all members and updating your personal Pawn for online use. Resting also passes time. However, it is an inn’s other services that you will frequently need. Inns act as banks and training grounds. Banking items is extremely useful. It stops time sensitive items from decaying. Items will tell you if they are time sensitive in the description. It also allows you to carry less weight, which means you move quicker and can loot more. Training allows you to not only learn and upgrade skills, but to even change your class. Since you can use passives from multiple classes you may wish to progress in many different classes, called vocations in game.

.As you grow more powerful you will find better equipment. However, sometimes you could use a boost to your power before you find new gear. The upgrade system is here to help! In general, each stage of upgrade to a piece of equipment requires more and rarer items. It also boosts the power higher with each given stage. There are three tiers to each item, and upgrading anything you plan on using will help make combat less painful.

A few final notes: You may or may not have noticed, but several of the images showed health bars that were not full. This is part of the combat design in Dragon’s Dogma. Most of the healing you will do in combat is from Of course, to get to certain areas you must find an magical healing spells. You slowly lose a portion entryway. Not all entryways are equal, and some of your maximum HP when you are damaged, and are back doors which are locked until you access those spells do not recover that maximum HP. This them from the other side. Thankfully your map can be reset, returning your full vitality, via several 166

As you go through the game, NPCs remember your actions. You can romance them, even giving gifts. Depending upon how you have acted and what you have done, each NPC will treat you in a different manner. Certain gifts match up best with certain NPCs. Make sure you read the descriptions to maximize your effectiveness.

The game only allows for one save. It does allow backtracking to a restore point if you saved in a dangerous area and cannot make it to safety, usually the last time you were in a town. The one save system may be frustrating if there are two people wanting to play. It also does not tell you what general level or order of questing would be good for you.

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methods. You could rest at an Inn and update your personal Pawn online. You or your personal Pawn could level up. Any party member can also restore that missing maximum health via healing items.

Overall Dragonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Dogma: Dark Arisen is an excellent port with some issues which remain from the original title. If you havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t played the game, it is certainly acceptable to pick it up on PC. It is even better if you can play with friends, and share pawns with regular updates.

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Riders of Icarus By Althea “Briseadh” Damgaard I enjoyed this game enough when I got into some of the closed beta testing that I decided I would buy a founders pack. This may not be my primary game, but it will be one of the games I will have in my bag of entertainment for some time. It’s like old school with a twist of a brand new world and a new way of enhancing your character. The systems are refreshing while having a comforting design that us long time gamers have seen and may have missed depending on what games we gravitated to.

Initial Overview One of the first things I liked was the choice of standard or action mode for your game play. Over the years I’ve grown from standard movement to what has been dubbed as the action mode. Older games could be played without using the mouse 168

much at all other than an easier way to turn your camera and character how you want. Newer games include needing the mouse to do some of your attacks. I find I like action mode even on the classes they say work better in standard mode thanks to my experiences in Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) and Black Desert Online (BDO) where the mouse is used for a combination of things while fighting. I’m still working on remembering to set my pet to guard mode before closing the familiar screen so I don’t have to reopen it or hit ‘insert’ to change the mode I am in. Thankfully knowing the key that changes it quick helps and if you don’t like the default key-bindings, you can always change them. The thing I had to change the keybind on was the run/walk toggle. It was the ‘/’ key. Yes, that blocky

Once I had myself sorted out with the modes of play and no more fear of being stuck in walk, I got down to playing a berserker. It is supposed to be the easiest to play, but I have this thing of Briseadh, my main character in any game being a crazy, big weapon wielding chick. It’s stuck since the first iteration of her in Warhammer where she was a high elf swordmaster. In the last closed beta I had to go with my quirky sense of making her really big eyed and cute like there was no way she was lifting the sword off the ground. We even got dresses at one point to put the characters in. So her short beta time had her in what was better for

a nightclub outing for dancing rather than fighting with a big sword. I found quickly I did like bashing things in this game. The berserker has several combo commands that if you hold down the key they will cycle and then do a build up bar. If you let it fill up three times, from lighter orange through to red-orange, it produces a big hit. Other classes have the same thing, but I noticed them faster on the beserker. The first one you learn from the start has the awesomeness of spinning your enemy in the air three times and landing them on the ground. A few levels later you have the skill that has you raise your two-handed

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rectangle is supposed to be the ‘/’ key. A lot of my guild mates changed it just so it was readable, but there is a greater reason to do so. If you don’t hit enter first and then type /g to get into guild chat, it slams you into walk mode. It can get you stuck in walk mode, at least in the early access it happened to several of us. I changed it to some off the wall ‘Alt+F’ or something like that. Something you couldn’t possibly hit by accident.

sword over your head and slam it down on your enemy as if to split them in two. Sure it is not overly realistic, but it is fun and rather satisfying when you pull it off correctly. I’ve even had her spin three enemies in the air at once with this skill. Those poor archer skeletons lined up in one part of the Lavalight Cavern, the first dungeon of the game, never had a chance!

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Review I did a duo run of Lavalight Cavern with my priestess and a sorcerer. Only time we had to stop was when he ran out of mana. I have yet to figure out how to run out of mana on my priestess even with furious attempts at casting. Only thing I want is my target-ally heal (available around level 18) as I had a hard time keeping the sorcerer’s health up since the only thing I had was an area effect spell and a self heal. Try healing a sorcerer that is both the tank and dps in an elite dungeon. Is he going to stand still for about two seconds to suck up your heal? No! The old style MMO trinity is alive and well in this game. We tried the second dungeon of the game, Carleon Manor, with my beserker, a guardian, and a sorceress. We had the DPS to wipe things out, but that final boss had some really nasty tricks up his sleeve that a healer could have counteracted. I can’t remember what the highest level we tried, but we got pretty gutsy. The worse thing that could happen was our characters had their pixels rearranged and a possible debuff of dire wounds that lasts 10 minutes!

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I would like to make a side note about the Carleon Manor dungeon. There is the courtyard and from there three doors for the left wing, main manor and right wing. The party member with the key will see sparkles on all three doors, but the key can only be used once. Be sure to choose the left or the right so that you can at least do the side quests for that wing. The dungeon has to be reset so you can run in, get the key again, and go for the other side if you want to get all your repeatable quests done before turning them in. We thought this was a bug at first, but after a lengthy email discussion with GMs about it, we confirmed this is how the game designers meant this dungeon to be. I still haven’t got back there to see what a vampire cook would have in his kitchen, but I’m not sure I want to! The flow of the game is pretty easy as you have quests to follow in order, though you might feel like you run in circles to complete some areas. Not only do the quests advance the story, but they teach you about the most important thing in this game, familiars. After all it is “Riders” of Icarus. Familiars can be mounts, pets or put into seal stones, but always start as mounts when tamed.

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Obtaining Your Familiars and Their Uses

mobs. They have a higher chance of dropping off named bosses in dungeons, but my beserker has acquired some from common mobs in the level Familiars have to be tamed by going into taming 20+ areas. To use one you right click on it in your mode and then hitting the spacebar when you see inventory and your familiar window will pop open. the â&#x20AC;&#x153;spaceâ&#x20AC;? indicator pop up on your screen. If You then click on the familiar that you want to seal you time it right you will wind up on the back of in the stone. You can hover over a familiar to see the beast. It will buck you all over the place and what the seal stone benefit would be even if the try to knock you off. Most of the time you are just seal stone is not of the same rank. This is how I riding it out, but the W, A, S, and D keys will be played around figuring out what would be better shown on the screen with icons. Be sure to hit the for a beserker versus what to put on my priestess. correct key when its icon lights up. If you miss There are physical defense, mana, physical attack, hitting it on time, you will more than likely lose critical hit, etc bonuses you can get based on the the taming battle. If trying to tame a flying mount, beast you put in the stone. Make sure the correct I recommend trying to line up with it on a flying level of stone is used. Every ten levels you must get mount of similar size. You do get a special bird the next higher stone. Levels 1-10 will use a level that lasts for seven days after you activate it as a 10 stone, levels 11-20 will use a level 20 stone, familiar and another quest along the way will give etc. You cannot get a seal stone removed from you a sparrow to help with this if you did not buy armor from what I have seen so far in the game, a founders pack. but until later in July it is restricted to level 25 as the top level. The higher rank the familiar you put Seal stones can augment your armor and most into the stone, the higher stats it will add to the items have a slot, even early on. Common seal augmentation when applied to your equipment. stones can be bought from shopkeepers around the world while elite ones have to be looted from I did mention familiars can be pets and these 171

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require a scroll of the proper rank, common or elite, and also of the correct level range. Use the scroll and select the mount you want to turn into a pet. Every familiar, whether as a mount or a pet, will have bonuses it adds while being used. The fun thing with pets is you can have them passive just for a defense buff, have them in guard mode, or make them downright aggressive so they attack everything as soon as you get close enough. The pets do help with tougher solo fights and the buffs make the regular questing more fun. However, they have stamina limitations and will disappear when it runs out. You will either be dumped on the ground by a mount or possibly left hanging

Once you hit level 20 you will learn about talents. Every five levels from level 20 on you can pick a talent and currently the game shows up to eight slots for talents though until the game extends beyond level 25, you will only be able to pick two. There are three groups of talents to choose from and each has a total of six talents. Your first two talents will be the first available out of two of the groups. You have to be level 30 before you can choose the second talent in a grouping. I suppose you could wait, but it appears the goal is to let you work with two groupings with one as the major and one as the minor to augment the character to fill in the eight slots available at the moment. I am

in a dire fight if it is your pet. There are stamina potions in the game to help keep the familiar out longer. Also, the priestess can heal pets if they are standing in the area effect spell. I have yet to acquire the target ally to heal spell to see if it can target a pet or if the playerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pet gets healed when they are.

not sure if eight will be the max or not. The crux to the talents is you need sealed familiars. The stones used to augment your equipment can be used to add to your talent pool. You now want to pay attention to the number of points a familiar would add to the talent pool. This is the other stat you can see if you hover over a familiar

Crafting I have not figured out crafting beyond the simple things you can sell back and make a little money on if you use your own harvested materials. There are materials you need to buy to pair up with the harvested material to make things. It is a pretty simple system without a ton of layers to it and as you learn one stage it opens up the next. Currently there are two stages to handle the games L25 limit.

them. The level on the stone will have a normal chance if the same level as the armor and greater success the higher it is. I suggest using stones closer to the level of the item up first and saving the really good ones you get for those +20 armors.

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after activating a seal stone to use. The points do not change per the trained level of the familiar, so there is no need to level the familiar for this use and you can simply go with the level ten stones sealing the familiar as soon as it is tamed. The amount that you can have in your talent pool will increase as you level and each consecutive talent in a grouping will require more talent points than the previous one.

There are only a few of these that you get at the beginning from the quest that teaches you about this. You want to buy extraction tools of the appropriate level, like sealing stones it is level 10 for 1-10, level 20 for 11-20, etc., in order to acquire more stones. You can even use it on a normal weapon or armor piece with no enhancements and get tempering stones to use. A shopkeeper or general merchant usually has these extraction tools.

Conclusion

I had a lot of fun taming familiars and figuring out what I could do with them, which is one of the Food, potions and special items for taming are main premises of the game. You can pretty much probably the things you will use the most out of solo the game if you want and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pretty easy to crafting. However, I just acquired a heroic armor stop and pick up where you left off no matter how piece recipe out of Lavalight Caverns that would long you get to play. You will want to group for be fun to figure out. So the main items may not the fun of it and for the elite and heroic dungeons. be worth making other than leveling the skill, but Definitely do not skip trying to do these several there are recipes out there to make some possibly times at the various levels with your friends. I will cool things for your characters. I really suggest suggest not rushing to level 25 because you can running the dungeons several times to get some do it in a couple of days, but this game is being good money and loots that may drop good things opened up to higher levels slowly. Take your time for the crafting, as well. and enjoy the ride!

Plus Stats for Armor You can take any armor from normal stats to â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;+â&#x20AC;&#x2122; stats. Each piece will tell you the max it can go to. Most starter armors are up to +5, but currently there are armors that will go to +15. You use elite tempering stones, one per plus to be added, to enhance the armor. All stones will have a level on 173

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Get Wrecked in Warface By: Benjamin “Foghladha” Foley What seems like ages ago, I was first introduced to Crytek and Free Radical Design’s Warface at the 2012 PAX Prime. It was described as a free2-play cooperative shooter. What sold me on the game was the video clips of the soldier sliding under a truck and blasting a shielded soldier with a shotgun launching him into the air.

where players choose from one of four classes. They can engage in one of four gameplay modes. Each gameplay mode has it’s own set of achievements and rewards for completion. Players can form clans to make grouping up for missions a breeze. Additionally, they can climb the clan ladder and become a dominant force on the battlefield.

It was something I had never seen in a game before and it spoke my language. Over the past few years that little promo video has given way to one heck of a title for those who love the cooperative FPS.

Warface has been constantly evolved releasing new content, skins, and challenges. With gameplay combining traditional FPS style gameplay with a Parkour style movement system that lets you sprint, slide, climb, and hurdle your way across the battlefield.

Gameplay The base gameplay consists of 5 player teams, 174

Your loadout consists of a primary weapon,

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secondary weapon (pistol), grenade, and class equipment like a medpack, ammo kit, or armor kit. Additionally you have multiple auxiliary slots where you can place special grenades, like flashbangs, claymores, or smoke bombs, that you can acquire through daily rewards and through the cash shop.

Engineer, and Sniper. Each player can choose a role at the beginning of the match which determines their loadout and abilities. Now unlike some other FPS games that have played with this idea, Warface puts emphasis on it.

The Classes

This class is essential on any mission. They carry large machine guns, assault rifles, and most importantly extra ammo for the squad. Without one of these in your party, your team will run out

The core of this game is the synergy of the class system. Split into 4 classes, Rifleman, Medic,

Rifleman

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Review of ammo and be forced to take down those snipers, heavy gunners, and shielded jackwagons of death with only a knife. Assault is the only class that can provide team members with additional ammo and thus a team is bound to fail without one. Medic My personal favorite, this class carries a medpack and defibrillator that can heal and resurrect a fallen member within a given allotment of time. The defibrillator is also handy for getting the Dr. Doom achievement by using it on enemies to shock them to death. This is a very good way to dispatch those pesky Heavy Gunners. Funny. Being 90% covered in metal doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t hold up to well to an electrical current. To compliment your infinite healing ability and static personality, you will find the shotgun as a reliable friend who can send people flying. Literally! They fly! Medic is perfect for the player that likes to get up close and personal with your 176

enemy. I like to think of it as an assassin! I can take my axe to your face and then go heal myself and my team then charge back in knifes blazing. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a very satisfying experience. Engineer Engineers have the unique ability to restore playerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s armor. Armor is like a second health bar. This allows players to take a few more hits before they start bleeding out. Additionally they come equipped with claymores which provide a much needed asset on the battlefield when opening doors to a whole lot of angry shield wielding blackwater soldiers. Sniper This class has a rough start in the game. When I first picked Warface up, I tried out the sniper class and found more often than not I was the first to die and the last to get a kill. The beginner armor is just not very protective and the gameplay is so fast that you rarely get to get a shot off before someone

Special Operations

else kills them.

Missions

Verses & Ranked Verses

These basic missions are about 15 minute battles that place you on one of 6 daily battlefields. Every day the missions rotate so you often times will find new missions you haven’t tried yet. Even now, I’m still finding missions I’ve never played 2 years after I began playing. Missions are classified as Easy, Medium, Hard, or Insane. Each type typically consists of a certain type of soldier class you’ll be fighting and how many “boss” soldiers you’ll be facing. Your missions can pit you against heavy soldiers that can only be hurt by shooting the glowing exhaust on their back, assault helicopters, sentry turrets, and even giant mechs.

In this mode you’re pitted 15v15 against other players in one of 8 gameplay modes. These are, for the most part, traditional gameplay modes most players will be familiar with if they’ve ever played a Call of Duty or Counter Strike game.

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The special operations missions award greater exp, cash, and vp rewards for completion but also are much more challenging. These are considered raid content and consist of compiling multiple stages of a plotline. Each one of these raids can be completed in normal, hard, or insane modes but you are limited to 10 attempts per day. These missions can last anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. From personal experience I can tell you their The Modes insanely fun but bloody hard. Having a good group The core game consists of 4 modes. Missions, dynamic is essential. No one man can complete Special Operations (Raids), Verses, and Ranked these on their own. It is a pure example of where Verses. The basic Missions mode is your general team play is required. However, after you get out of the “newbie” mission, things get different. Through the hard, insane, and special operations missions, you’re going to be real thankful you brought a sniper along. About the time rockets start flying at you and your team you will realize the importance of being able to take something down at a long range.

Versus Modes: • Team Deathmatch - Two teams go head to head to see who can reach the kill goal first. • Storm - The assaulting team must capture 3 strategic points in succession while the defending team must prevent their advance. 177

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• Free for All - Every man for themselves in this deathmatch mayhem.

Progression in Warface is broken into 3 key • Destruction - Similar to king of the hill mechanics. except with air strikes, the two teams fight over the center location. When the objective Ranks hits 100% an airstrike bombards the enemy Earning ranks allow you to purchase or earn team. Three airstrikes wins, however if better armor and equipment. The higher you rank neither team captures the center objective in the better the armor you can equip and the more 120 seconds both teams lose. missions are available to you. • Plant the Bomb - One team must plant the bomb, the other must disarm or prevent it from being placed. • Bag ‘n Tag - Similar to Free for All but without respawns, in this mode players collect dog tags from fallen soldiers for extra points as they fight to be the last alive.

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Progression

Arsenal Unlocks (VP) Additionally you can chose one of three progression paths before each match to unlock new guns, armor and attachments. By filling the exp bar for each you will be able to unlock better gear. Challenges Lastly there are a wealth of Challenges you can earn by performing certain feats. These Challenges will let you stylize your nameplate with Marks, Badges, and Stripes.

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Auctions On of the many ways players can earn some extra cash to buy new gear is by listing rare weapons they receive out of reward chests on the Auction. Players can bid using Kredits, a cash shop currency you can purchase or earn by selling rate guns on the auction. Many of the weapons found on the auction are very rare or were only available for a limited time.

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Mirror’s Edge Catalyst Reimagining the City of Glass By Ed “Screenager” Orr In 2008, Electronic Arts (EA) and Dice released Mirror’s Edge. Its futuristic cityscape, cut from clean lines and illuminated in bold primary colors, was a world away from the tank treads and trench warfare of Dice’s iconic Battlefield franchise. Gameplay was equally innovative. It incorporated parkour, a type of acrobatic running that generally involves running, climbing, swinging, rolling, and vaulting across urban environments. Players that were sent hurtling over obstacles and off walls found a game that was unlike anything that had come before it. Now, after an eight-year hiatus, players can return to the City of Glass in Mirror’s Edge Catalyst.

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The latest iteration of the Mirror’s Edge series reimagines the original game and introduces Faith to players once again. As a deliberate reboot, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst charts Faith’s rise from runner to insurgent as she battles for freedom against the ruling corporation and underworld organizations. Gaming has changed significantly since Mirror’s Edge was initially announced in 2007, which may could explain Dice’s decision to reinvent the world. The Assassin’s Creed franchise, for example, launched around the same time as Mirror’s Edge and Ubisoft spent the following years perfecting its design with a mix of fluid combat, aerobic movement, and open world gameplay. DICE has attempted to adapt Mirror’s Edge to this new landscape with its latest release.

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Where the original Mirror’s Edge provided a fairly linear experience, this new version has embraced the open world. Steel and glass spires, rendered using the Frostbite 3 engine, crawl up towards the sky, creating stunning views of this sprawling metropolis. Exploration is embraced. Zip lines, ledges, balconies, and crash mats litter the environment creating a maze of routes across the map. Movement is well designed with a small selection of buttons providing highly versatile interactions. Climbing up walls, leaping across chasms, and clambering up pipes are executed using the same controls, which makes getting around intuitive. Although controls are intuitive, outcomes can be unpredictable at times. While jumping over ledges or grabbing pipes, players can

occasionally find Faith spontaneously vaulting off into chasms or flailing to grab unintended ledges. This makes movement feel less than optimal and is typical of much of Mirror’s edge Catalyst. Players exploring the game’s myriad of rooftops will find navigation is one of the trickier aspects of Mirror’s Edge Catalyst. Runners vision is an essential aid in getting across town and completing quests. This red line snakes out in front of players, illuminating handrails, ledges, pipes, and ledges as it recommends a route across the city. It can also be incredibly infuriating. Runner’s vision regularly results in players hurtling blindly over the edge of buildings with no idea of what is ahead or simply leaves them hanging at critical junctions. Falling 181

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at just the wrong moment or failing to complete assignments regularly results in a protracted loading screen. As a consequence, movement feels less than optimal and exploration seems overly risky. In a game that should encourage players to test the limits of their environment, this feels unnecessarily punishing.

the game’s problems are compounded by a series of repetitive quests that make the open world uninviting.

it hurtles by. Dialogue is uninspired, ruining any sense of immersion that the game achieves and

world uninviting.

Delivery drops and time trials are rarely much better, and prescribed routes around the city leave very little room for error. It is common to complete these by the thinnest of margins, discouraging Side quests are another stumbling point in Faith’s exploration and incentivising players to stick to journey. Dotted across the open world, these quests follow the path in their “runners vision”. Rewards can be picked up from drop points or one of the for this effort feel lackluster. While open world city’s well tailored corporate citizens. These Non exploration should fit Mirror’s Edge perfectly, the Player Characters feel out of place as they loiter on punishing loading times, a lack of quest diversity, rooftops, stoically ignoring the rest of the world as and an incentive to play it safe make the open

Fighting corporate drones is initially enjoyable. Sliding down zip wires and finishing with a flying kick, dodging attacks, pushing enemies off ledges, and simply barging past obstacles feels fitting for a game that is far from a standard cover shooter. However, the hive of faceless corporate drones sent to subdue Faith quickly become inconsequential. It is rare to find many of them posing a substantial

threat, even when Faith’s combat routines are hollow in comparison to Ubisoft’s Assassins. Mirror’s Edge Catalyst is a contradiction. It is filled with great ideas and incredible potential, but it also contains moments of disappointment. Too many components of this game fail to work in a complementary fashion, and these problems undermine the simple joy of running. If you appreciated the core components of the first game and found Faith engaging, then you may still want to see more of the City of Glass.

Review

Faith’s central story arc is a far less problematic experience and a source of some crucial variety. Quest goals are similar throughout but do not feel strong-armed into the game. Infiltrating corporate facilities and some taxing jumping puzzles are particular highlights, although combat does feel a unsatisfying..

We reviewed Mirror’s Edge Catalyst on PS4. The game is also available now on PC, and XBOX One..

183

Recipe

Chicken Milano with Lemon Tarragon Mushroom Sauce By Robert J. “Jairone” Mann One of the dishes I absolutely love in Italian cuisine is Chicken Milano. However, most places cook it with so much butter that it turns into an oily mess. I’ve found myself wishing there was something better, with less oil but still delicious. This recipe is the result of my work on that idea. The mixture of lemon and tarragon is invigorating. These two flavors are the compliment to the natural flavors of the dish, while the others are more supportive. As always, feel free to adjust the quantities or ingredients to suit your taste, and Bon Appetit!

Ingredients: •

Six chicken breast halves, without bones or skin.

•

1 teaspoon lemon pepper.

•

1/3 cup lemon juice.

•

1 teaspoon rosemary.

•

2/3 cup milk.

•

1 teaspoon tarragon.

•

1/3 cup Parmesan cheese, finely grated.

•

16 basil leaves (fresh) or 6 teaspoons dried basil.

•

1/2 lb. Provolone cheese.

•

5 cups water. (More if using more than two pans.)

•

2/3 lb. ham (black forest, honey, or plain.)

tablespoon

salt,

any

standard

salt

replacement. *May be left out or reduced. Merely enhances the flavor a little.* 184

Directions: Bring to a boil on high heat, and stir regularly for five minutes.

Take the pot off the heat. Add the Slice and tenderize chicken ? cup milk. Slowly add the ? cup breast until thin. The thinner the Parmesan cheese while stirring breasts the more tender the dish so it does not clump. Return the will be. pot to low heat and stir for two Return to the oven until the minutes. cheese has melted thoroughly. While you wait, make that stovetop nice and clean again!

Recipe

Remember to handle raw poultry and knifes with care, wash your hands, and donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t burn yourself!

Slice and serve with a large flat spatula.

Place the tenderized breast in two baking pans single layered. Use more than two pans if needed. Add two cups water to each baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit (177 degrees Celsius) for 30 minutes. If not fully cooked continue until done. It is always important to fully cook poultry!

Ensure that the chicken is cool enough to handle. Spread the chicken back out in the pan so it maximizes the area used. Turn the oven back on at the same 350/177 degrees.

Drain the juices from the chicken. Let the chicken cool while preparing the next steps (20 minutes cooling time needed.) Top evenly with basil and the In a pot, put 1 cup water and ? mushroom sauce. Next top cup lemon juice. Add 9 ounces evenly with the ham. Finally, top fresh sliced mushrooms. Add evenly with the Provolone. all seasonings except the Basil. 185

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Gaiscioch Community Corner Welcome to the Gaiscioch Community Corner. A place where we give shoutouts to the games and developers that have influenced us and say thanks to the companies and members that have supported our Magazine, Livestreams and Community.

members that do it because they love it. We love games, we love music, we love entertainment, most of all we love our supporters. Throughout this magazine you will find ads for games and products that have supported our endeavors. All of these ads are complementary to show our gratitude for their support. Gaiscioch members can also use credits they earn by participating in the community to promote their own businesses, charities or products.

Gaiscioch Magazine was born from or love of gaming. We wanted to create a magazine by gamers, for gamers & developers. It was a terrifying endeavor and nobody expected it to become the success it is today. None of this could not be possible without the support of the Game Development community and the hard working This section of the Gaiscioch Magazine is our way of members of Gaiscioch community. This entire saying thanks, to all of those that have gone above publication is volunteer driven, with no income. and beyond to make our endeavors a success. It is put together each quarter by a handful of

Thank You! 190

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192

Experience Warhammer Fantasy like never before in this first person 4 player co-op action adventure

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he Gaiscioch Family extends far beyond the game. Our members have a very broad professional background extending from teachers to CEO’s. Our members are involved in the businesses, organizations, and government agencies below. We are very proud of our diverse community and support our members in all of their real life accomplishments.

194

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